I was listening to the news the other morning on NPR regarding a suicide bomber, and I started thinking about what it would take for me give up my own life for a cause. It reminded me of thoughts I had about death as a child. Somewhere along the line I must of asked a parent or adult figure about death, and they told me I was too young to die. I took this to mean it was impossible for me to die.

I had a dream a few years later, and in the dream I had died. A few houses down the street from me there was a house that had no sidewalk. I lived in a neighborhood where every house had a sidewalk, but this house did not. The sidewalk just ended. There was grass for fifty or sixty feet, and then the sidewalk started again. In this dream that patch of grass was a cemetery, and it was where I was buried. I was both dead and alive, and I was viewing my own gravestone. Maybe I was a ghost. I don't remember for sure. When I woke up I realized the truth about what I was told, and that I too could die. I can still remember the dread I felt, and how desperately I wanted to hold on to life.