When death comes/ like the hungry bear in autumn;// when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse/ to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;/ when death comes/ like the measle-pox/ when death comes/ like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,/ I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:/ what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?/ And therefore I look upon everything/ as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,/ and I look upon time as no more than an idea,/ and I consider eternity as another possibility,/ and I think of each life as a flower, as common/ as a field daisy, and as singular,/ and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,/ tending, as all music does, toward silence,/ and each body a lion of courage, and something/ precious to the earth./ When it’s over, I want to say all my life/ I was a bride married to amazement./ I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms./ When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder/ if I have made of my life something particular, and real./ I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,/ or full of argument./ I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

My Turner syndrome diagnosis at the age of 15 was a visit from Death. Death told me that only 2% of babies like me survive birth, so my life was a miracle to begin with. Death told me that I would probably not be able to have children. Death told me that I might have cognitive and social difficulties. Death told me that my heart and kidneys might not fully function. These were all aspects of my life’s trajectory that profoundly altered my identity and dreams.

Death lingered in my shadow for many years. I was fearless before Death knocked me down. It took years for my body to become a precious lion of courage. It took years to find amazement. It took years to take the world in my arms. I had to sit with the choice I had been given. I had to make the conscious decision not to live silent and frightened. I had to make a conscious decision not to simply visit my world. My practice of all that is part of my falling apart and coming back together.

I know I am not the only person to be visited by Death. (Death understood as glimpses of our mortality.) Death visits us all in big and small ways. Chronic and terminal diagnoses. The death of loved ones. Losing jobs. Divorce. “Close calls.” Natural disasters. Events that are so huge, as Naomi Shihab Nye reflects, all the details are erased. Events that are so small they feel like 1,000 little cuts.

Within all that — brotherhood and sisterhood, time as idea, eternity as another possibility, flowers and music, precious bodies — life can be particular and real.