Going home

These might be my final hours, and I have just yet begun. There's nothing that I yet know, but I feel incredibly weak. Whether my system will survive the night and whatever comes afterward, who knows.

This really did happen to me, but I have no vivid memories. Only my body remembers. I was five days old at that time, sick with a newborn sepsis, a serious illness that brought me very close to death.

In the end, I made it back and found my gradual way into life.

It was an eventful start, and maybe because of this, I have always had a deep comfort with death. It's almost a yearning for it. Don't get me wrong. I don't desire to die. I just desire to go back home. And that's really the feeling that death and the idea of it has always evoked in me, that it will be like going home.

The best comparison I can give: After a long and probably exhausting workday at 5:00 PM, you're finally ready to drop things. It's time for checking out and leaving. Home is waiting for you.

That is how death has always seemed to me.

I've had my actual last workday today, finally checking out and leaving. But not because I'm dying. I'm leaving my job for 6 months of Thailand. Synchronistically, my visa arrived today in my mailbox. All lights seem green.

Wherever I am, death is a reminder to live more fully. That can be achieved by remembering that today is not for granted and that it is a gift to be alive.

That counts whether you are in the Netherlands or Thailand or wherever. :)