When Mortality Becomes An Unwelcome Resident In Your Mind
People often categorize themselves in years. This was a good year, that was a terrible year, etc. I have never really believed that the physical turning of the calendar impacted my day-to-day life. That is until 2022. In 2022, I was gripping on for dear life, waiting for December to come and go as quickly as possible. I am now well into 2023, and only now am I able to step back and wonder what the hell happened. How did I get rocked so hard? Have I really dealt with that pain? Or have I simply let the calendar turn? It is so simple to look back at a year through the lens of how you want to perceive it. What is not so easy is to look at the person you were and then compare that to the human you have become, even though evaluating your current self in the moment is nearly impossible. These words are my attempt at doing the math, following the dots to try to find myself again.
If my 2022 had a headline, it would be “Girl in Mexico Falls 18 Feet and Miraculously Survives”. I woke up one April morning to a text from my not-very-texty father saying, “Hey Pete, call me when you wake up.” I didn’t even need to make the call; in that very moment, I knew my life had changed. In a weekend morning daze, I listened to the voice that resembled my father’s but mixed with more fear and exhaustion than I had ever heard from him explain to me that my sister had fallen 18 feet onto the stairs and was in the middle of a 10+ hour spinal surgery. I sat in bed, knowing I only had moments to wash my tears and tell my wife that my sister was likely paralyzed all before a tiny human who didn’t understand anything happening came rushing in, wanting the same hugs and books he normally gets on a Saturday morning.
Now, this is the moment that I could go into my relationship with my sister at the time (or lack thereof). Instead, I will tell you that if there was a silver lining to 2022, it would be that my sister, who was once an alien to me, is now my soul mate. My sister is everything in 2023. It took the near loss of her life, but I vowed the moment I read the text message from my father that my sister would be protected for the rest of her life. At that very moment, everything changed. At that moment, an unspoken link was connected between the two of us.
The real equation to finding myself in these pages, though, does not lie in my relationship with my sister. It lies in everything else. As a lifelong cyclist, I have become accustomed to the fears of the road. I have lost friends but always distant. In 2022, though, I almost lost a friend who got hit while riding his bike. It rocked me. Then, it happened: I lost a friend. Panda, who was a fixture in the LA cycling scene and one of the nicest guys in the world, was hit and passed away. The thought that I would never ride through Griffith and bump into him again was simply too much to handle. As a father, my brain could not even comprehend what my father was going through, let alone the complete loss of your child. It was simply too much to handle, and for months, my brain just shut down.
The mind is a funny thing that way, though. When you shut one window, the wind finds its way through another. As much as I said I was ok, I found it nearly impossible to ride in a car that someone else was driving. The world was traveling faster than I could control it, and my new sense of mortality was crippling. All of those thoughts that we all have and so often answer with “that only happens to other people” suddenly had no answer. I was the one on the other side, grappling with tragedy, but because of the comfortable life I had led until this moment, I was unfit for battle.
I found it difficult to even ride my bike in those months. It seemed almost inevitable that something might harm me. I could not put myself in a situation that would render me useless to my sister. I could not risk putting my parents through an inevitable tragedy. At least that’s how it felt. My logical brain knew that the odds were slim, but my heart felt raw, and my human body felt for the first time in my life what it actually was. For the first time, I felt the weight of mortality. I held it in its beautiful power, honoring it, but for many months, I was not ready for it.
Pain and tragedy are a weird sensation. I was overcome with guilt. I feel guilty for feeling so hurt and sorry for myself when so many people have it so much worse. It was not until a friend shook me loose of that trap during a dinner that I began to accept the fact that no matter my comfortable life, I am still allowed to hurt and grieve. Grieving is precisely what it was. Grieving the loss of who my sister was, grieving the loss of who my parents were because they would never be exactly the same. I was also grieving the loss of myself. That is not to say that I was lesser than the day before. It is to say that the mind that inhabited this body was dramatically different overnight. It took time to get to know that person.
The beauty is that as time evolved, I grew to not only love that person but also find that all the people around me after my sister’s accident softened. They were all a little more comfortable saying “I love you” and a little more willing to savor the moment. My sister has a look, that look you give a sibling that says everything all while saying nothing. We never had that look, but now we do. Some days are harder than others for both of us, I am sure. I am beginning to learn, though, that while I may ride my bike a little more cautiously these days, and I still prefer to be the one driving, I will never be able to control the world around me, and I would not have it any other way.
