Death March

My doctor had stated with great conviction that I will die tomorrow. How blizzare.

This is not something you conventionally hear about your medical diagnosis - it is usually "Oh Bettany, with a heavy heart I must tell you that you have six months to live. I am terribly sorry." My actual name is Bitna according to the birth certificate my mother got from a random South Korean hospital in one of the poorest areas when she was 21. She wasn't accompanied by my dad on the way in or out.

I felt tugs on my heart strings from time to time before my visit and tests at the hospital and the obnoxious doctor who looked at my Asian features and had appeared to immediately dislike me. It had been quite a fuss to appoint a meeting in the first place, not so much from the mutual dislike between me and the cardiac guy, but me refusing to get checked and being pushed by my children and grandchildren. I went out of obligation to prove to my family that I am still a strong lady, even if I was 99. I didn't even look that old.

After the meeting that I cut short at the hospital, I decided to ponder on this last statement about my death. I neither felt ready or unready to go. When I looked back at my life, and my youth experience I felt ready to go. I would see all of the people I had lost in that time, the good ones, and maybe the bad ones, and also the ones who redeemed themselves in my story.

But when I looked at my grandchildren and their innocent bright smiles, at fragile young ages, I was not so sure anymore. It was a contradition that brought about two happy endings, in a weird sense of the word death. I learned very well how not to be afraid to die, and perhaps this was the entire reason I was still alive at all!

After an hour of a walk around the busy streets of the city I decided to live in with great passion, I saw the beach front line and a small area that separated sand and grass. Sitting down on the grass area once I got there, I felt a strange sensation of... something close to glee and nostalgia. I surely must be taking the doctor's statement very lightly. Why was I dying again?

I must have it forgotten but the bottom line was that my body was exhausted, I wasn't replicating cells, I wasn't eating or drinking properly according to my body's needs, and I apparently move around too much - what an idiot. This is why I never established a standard habit of going to the hospital.

All in all, I consider this death to be the natural way of going - painless, quiet, and with a smile on my face.

I smiled at that thought - it is good to end my journey this way.

I always had a habit of forgetting my birthday, especially when I was younger. In order to be sure of the dates and to not be surprised once my family came to visit, I developed a strategy to circle my calendar entirely in the month specifically, and to colour the date box itself in full red as a trigger warning. It has worked phenominally well for the past 45 years. Once paper calendars started to disappear from the market for the sake of digitalisation, I started making my own.

And as I remembered the date of that sacred day, it turned out that in two days I would be turning 100. Or I won't because I will die in a few hours. Something between the two options.

I checked the clock on a tall corporate building close to the beach which displayed big angry red numbers, across one of the upper floors. It was 19:45 in the evening. At least I hope so because I also forgot my glasses at the house.

I must be forgetting quite a few things, but at least they are mundane. I tell myself that when I feel especially down as I am not fully an idealist - I know that I will get worse as time goes on. It is the natural way of one's journey. My youthful self carried a character of great strength and impeccable memory, especially when I had to remember other people's traits. Later in my life I became a psychologist through the passion of learning about others. Those skills were also very valuable in their own way once I got in deep waters and an impossible number of challenging threats around me. Age be damned, I know I will remember this experience even after I die.

In my profound and disorganised thoughts I did not sense my grandchildren approaching me and running across the beach front. As they tapped me, I jumped.