It was not death. It was grief.

I wrote this on May 9, 2023, after my first therapy session.

At the time, I was not writing to make sense to anyone else. I was writing because I needed somewhere to place the weight of what I could not yet fully understand. I went there thinking I needed answers about death, about fear, about the thoughts that kept appearing in the middle of ordinary days and quiet nights. But what I slowly began to realize was that fear is not always about the thing it names. Sometimes, fear is only the shape grief takes when it has been ignored for too long.

I am sharing this now not because I have all the answers, or because healing has become a straight and finished line. It has not. I am sharing this because this was the day I first allowed myself to ask for help, and the day I began to understand that some fears are not warnings, but wounds asking to be seen. Some fears are grief trying to speak.

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Today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

Since my birthday, I have been thinking about death a lot. Not because I want it. In fact, I fear it.

It has become a persistent thought, an idea that creeps in while I do the most ordinary things: walking, eating, riding a motorcycle, sitting inside a car, taking public transport.

What if 29 is the age I am destined to die?

What if it is not 50, like what I constantly tell people when we talk about the perfect human shelf life?

What if I walk on the street and get killed by a crazy bystander? What if I get into an accident because I do not know how to cross the street properly? What if I get food poisoning? What if I suddenly develop a food allergy I never had before? What if the motorcycle I am riding crashes? What if it is a car?

I thought I could easily brush the thought off, but it lingered.

It never went away.

It stayed.

It started affecting the way I saw life, and even the way I moved through my daily routines.

Until one night, it broke into my sleep like a thief in the night. Like an uninvited guest at a birthday party. Like a prisoner who had escaped from jail and found the perfect spot for a hideout.

My eyes were closed, and death came in from my head down to my chest, making my heart beat twice as fast as it normally would. It woke me up, as if sending a reminder that if I closed my eyes any longer, they might never open again.

Not anymore.

So today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

I wanted to understand what was happening to me. Why I was thinking this way. What I should do to make it stop.

I was desperate for answers.

I was longing for answers.

All I could think about were the answers.

On the fifth floor of a six-story building was a small white room where I decided to see a therapist. She was there, sitting on a black swivel chair, waiting for me.

I came in, said hi, and apologized for not showing up on our original schedule, to which she kindly said she understood.

I told her my story.

I told her how I had become scared that death was coming for me soon. I told her this was my first time asking for help, because I had never needed help before.

Or maybe because I always thought asking for help meant inconveniencing people.

I told her I wanted answers.

I told her why I could not die just yet.

Mom left three years ago with three requests I needed to fulfill.

Keep the family together.

Celebrate my little sister’s 18th birthday.

Make sure she finishes college.

They sounded simple when said as sentences. But to me, they became commandments. They became the last shape of my love for her. They became the proof that even after death, I could still be a good son.

I had done two out of three, I told her. But I still had a long road ahead before I could complete the last one.

That was why I could not die yet.

Not because I believed I had control over death, but because the idea of dying before fulfilling all three felt like failing her again. I did not want to meet her in the afterlife with unfinished promises in my hands. I did not want her to look at me and say that I failed her when she was living, and I failed her even after she was gone.

“Let’s talk about your mom,” the therapist said. “Her passing. Can you tell me more?”

I wanted answers, so why were we going there? I asked myself.

But I answered anyway.

I told her about Mom’s death, or at least the version of it I had learned to say out loud.

I told her how everything happened in a way that still feels both slow and sudden to me. How there were days when I knew we were already losing her, but I still kept looking for signs that we could keep her a little longer. How I held on to every possible option, not because I was ready to make difficult decisions, but because I was afraid of what would happen if we stopped trying.

I told her about the dialysis.

How she did not want it. How my dad did not want it. How my siblings did not want it.

And how I did.

Not because I wanted her to suffer. Not because I wanted to go against what everyone else felt. But because I thought that if there was still one more thing we could try, then maybe we should try it.

Maybe that was what love was supposed to do.

Maybe love meant refusing to surrender, even when the body was already tired, even when everyone else was already afraid to hope.

But grief has a cruel way of rewriting intentions.

What I once understood as an act of hope slowly became evidence against me. In my mind, I stopped being the child who wanted his mother to live. I became the person who made the wrong decision. The person who pushed too hard. The person who asked for one more chance, only for that chance to become part of the ending.

I told her how, after Mom died, I did not know where to place that guilt.

There were people to talk to, papers to settle, visitors to receive, decisions to make, messages to answer, and a family to hold together. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

I stood there.

I moved.

I answered questions.

I thanked people for coming.

I looked composed enough for everyone to believe I was strong.

And maybe I wanted them to believe it.

Because if they believed I was strong, then maybe I could believe it too.

I told her how I only cried once, inside my apartment, when I got home after the first night of her wake. It was the kind of cry that did not feel like release. It felt like something escaping before I could stop it.

After that, I packed it away.

I wore the bubbly, jolly version of myself again because that was the version people knew. That was the version that did not make people uncomfortable. That was the version that could still function.

Everyone kept saying, “You’re going to be okay.”

But not a single person asked me if I was really okay.

And I think, had even one person asked, I might have fallen apart. I might have admitted that I was not okay. That I was scared. That I was angry. That I felt guilty.

That I did not know how to be a son without a mother.

Or an older sibling with too many responsibilities.

Or a person expected to keep moving after the person who held everything together was gone.

I told her how I felt that the three things Mom asked for became my responsibility alone because she told them to me.

I told her how afraid I was to ask for help, even during the toughest times and the lowest lows, because I did not want to inconvenience the people around me.

I told her how asking for help made me feel less capable. Less competent.

I told her how I had approached life through temporary happiness because, deep inside, I still blamed myself for Mom’s death.

As if I killed her.

As if I caused it because I pushed her to undergo dialysis when she did not want to. When my dad did not want to. When my siblings did not want to.

It was me who wanted it.

And in my mind, it led to her demise.

“I think what you are experiencing now is part of what happened three years ago,” she said. “The thought of death consumes you because you see it as a failure, not a conclusion.”

I see it as a failure, not a conclusion.

Make it make sense.

“We need to unpack more of that grief because it is important to let it out,” she continued. “You have kept it for three years, and healing takes time. One year for others, five for some, twenty for a few. What is important is that you are showing up now.”

Today, I finally decided to see a therapist because I wanted answers about my thoughts on death.

Only it was not death we were answering.

It was grief.