As A Christian, I Am Fascinated by Death

Having no respect for the end makes you a dangerous individual.

I’ve talked before about my lifelong fixation on the dark, spooky, and generally macabre. There’s an intensity about the looming notion that we’re all going to die that has always matched my own well. Death is coming for us all; so when you broach the subject to children, you can’t mince around it. You have to treat them like thinking human beings with some agency, just as helpless to stop the march of time and fate as any grown person.

I always liked that about death: we might not treat each other as the equals we all are in the eyes of God, but death does. It doesn’t puff itself up to make certain people feel important, and it doesn’t talk down to certain people to make them feel less than. It just comes, and you go. Simple. Quiet. Easy.

I’ve been long accustomed to the niggling siren song that is l’appel du vide. That momentary sensation of wanting to pitch yourself into trouble, which studies have linked less to self-harm and more toward the brain conducting a system check to make sure you know not to actually do that, right???

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a moment to gaze into that void before taking an instinctual step back — which is what your brain is hoping you’ll do. But the void is deep and dark, and looks strangely…