Many believe that there is life after you die. I do not. When I die, the only thing that will remain is my broken down body, which will continue to break down as it decomposes or gets cremated. I know this will upset and madden many of you, but please understand that while I do respect your beliefs, truly, I would like you to accept mine.

I cannot wrap my head around the idea that my body will just waste away and no longer be, but I simply do not believe I have a spirit that can live on beyond the death of my body. It’s a problem, of course, because I have a fear of death: https://serveyouwrite.wordpress.com/2022/11/23/fear-of-death/ (a piece I wrote in November last year), or rather, I used to.

Since sharing my fears, I have discovered a new lease on death. My mum gave me a book “All That Remains: A Life in Death” by Professor Dame Sue Black, a Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology. This story is a memoir of her career, scientifically based, but also tied with her own personal contemplations about death. While Black has held positions at several universities within the United Kingdom, namely St. Thomas’ Hospital, University of Dundee, Lancaster University and, more recently, St. John’s College, Oxford, her work as a forensic scientist has taken her globally to war zones in Kosovo and to the Indian Ocean Tsunami aftermath in Thailand. I would highly recommend you read Sue Black’s book. It has changed my views on death and I no longer fear death per se.

There are few people with whom I connect on what happens to us after we die. One such person is a very dear friend of mine. She lost her son four years, seven weeks and one day ago. He had a medical emergency and he died. The loss for her and her daughter, his sister, was insurmountable. It still is. The pain only worsens as time passes. No one can remove this pain, because no one can take away the love. For as long as love remains, so too shall the pain, forever.

When you don’t believe in life after death, it can be a curse. You have no hope of ever seeing the person you love again. Those who believe there is more after living on earth, these people have faith that they will meet their loved ones someday, in the wake of their own death. No matter how many people I speak to about this, I just know that there is no such thing as life after death. However, I can wrap my head around my own mortality after reading “All That Remains: A Life in Death”, because I have definitively decided what I would like to happen to my body after I die. You read it here, everyone, and I hope that my wishes are honoured by my family. I would like to donate my body, in its entirety, to the University Hospital of the West Indies Medical School. I would like medical students, doctors, nurses and other medical scientists to respectfully use my body in order to further their medical knowledge and expertise. Once they have finished using my body for medical science purposes only, they may return my remains to my family to do what they wish. This gives me a sense of purpose and a sense of peace, and I truly believe this will do the same for my family.

When people get sick, they often recover. Sometimes they do not, despite the great efforts that can go into saving someone’s life. We are never going to know for sure what will happen, but when we do get sick, we get a semblance of just how delicate and precious life is and how important every aspect of our health is in order for our body to survive illness, or even function as it should. I have been connecting with a young woman who has been sick for 11 months with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Every blessing that one could wish for from family, friends and a career came to this beautiful lady, likely because what she gave, and clearly still gives, of herself to others and to the earth, the universe has rewarded her. But life is not perfect for anyone, not even for the best of people on the planet. She has been dealt a hand that no human would wish on another, ever. She is amongst many millions of people, even billions, who suffer something, but she tells her story publicly, so we connect with her, what she is going through, what her family and friends are going through, and we choose to take her story and learn a few of our own life lessons. When she first spoke out about her diagnosis, my heart ripped in two for her and her family. Every day, I could not stop thinking about her. I still think about her every single day. We all wish we could help people in these times, find a cure, take away their illness, somehow change the fate of statistics in medical science. But we can’t do that, can we? We just have to be there to lend an ear, a shoulder, a hug, whatever they need from whomever. It has to be on their terms. Their sickness is not about you. It is about them. Just be there to listen.

At the moment, I am very sick with my own illness. I have two autoimmune diseases, Behçet’s disease and Scleroderma. While both have been in inflammatory, “flare-up”, mode for a couple months, the latter has brought on my third acute bout of gut dysmotility, which statistically has a mortality rate. According to the CDC “A mortality rate is a measure of the frequency of occurrence of death in a defined population during a specified interval.” However, I am a stubborn brute when it comes to certain things and I am not a statistic. Sure, my body is not completely obeying my mind at the moment, but my mind never gives up and my mind will not let this disease kill me. Not on my watch. My aforementioned friend has surely shown anyone who has been reading her social media posts this lesson. The mind is a powerful tool. Her mind is a powerful tool. It has defied so many acute and emergent medical problems, which she has endured, much more recently in particular, and her mind is not accepting what is happening to the rest of her body. The mind is the brain. The brain is the super organ, in my opinion. In fact, your brain controls everything in your body, so technically it really is the super organ. Even when something goes horribly wrong with parts of your brain, the other parts take over. The brain can literally rewire itself. It is the SUPER ORGAN!

I am not saying that any of this is easy, trust me, it’s not. But having someone whom I admire open up and share what her journey has been like is helping me right now to share my journey and to keep fighting each day. This is not my first rodeo, but it’s been 17, 14, 12 and 9 years, respectively, since I have been in desperately acute stages with my health. Her willingness to share is helping me fight today. Her determination and defiance of medical statistics reiterates the knowledge that I can fight this and solidifies the willpower to use my brain to fight this. There are certain things I cannot change, but there are plausible alternatives, ones which did actually seem impossible for me to wrap my head around even a month ago. When something acute happens with your health, putting your life at risk, you learn to accept the shortfalls about your usual normal-functioning body because you simply want to live. You simply know that the most important thing that must remain right now is your life.