A Childhood Fear That Grew With Me
For as long as I can remember, before I even reached my pre-teen years. I carried a fear far too heavy for a child: It wasn’t just fear of the dark, or ojuju calabar, or being left alone. It was fear of death. I didn’t know what death truly meant, but my imagination did the rest for me. In my young mind, dying felt like closing my eyes forever, endless darkness, holding my breath and being buried in a confined space beneath the earth terrified me. It was an anxiety I couldn’t explain, only feel. An unexplainable, overwhelming awareness that one day everything would simply… stop.
Heaven Was Supposed to Help… but It Didn’t
Adults around me would talk about heaven like it was a place of comfort. But the version of heaven I was taught, if we even made it there, didn’t help much either. Endless singing of hymns, no TV, no hunger, no food😭because apparently no one needed to eat🙄, and possibly no memory of our loved ones, only intensified my fears. On one hand, it felt less like comfort. On the other, it threatened to erase everything I once loved. How was I supposed to feel safe in a place where even my parents’ faces might fade?
Nights of Fear, and a Fragile Shield
At night, when my fear would peak, my mother became my anchor. She would recite Psalm 118:17:
“I shall not die but live and declare the works of the Lord in the land of the living…”
It worked like a tiny shield against the darkness creeping into my thoughts.
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I also held on to the idea of the rapture, thinking maybe it would save me and my loved ones. I imagined that one day, we’d all be swept up, snatched away (I wanted to go to heaven, but preferably without the whole dying part.)
Now that I’m older, I doubt rapture will happen (🤦🏽♂️) and if it does happen will not come on time to save me and my loved one’s from death. I will actually have to die😭. And so will everyone I love🥺.
As the years passed, I wonder where all those years went and how many more I have left. I think of my purpose, and if all of this is indeed worth it. Watching my parents and their friends grow older makes time feel too fast and cruel, seeing people I once saw as agile, slowly become frail. Their ageing became a mirror, reflecting my own inevitable path. I have always understood Solomon and why he wrote the way he did, like someone wrestling with the meaning of life, time, mortality, and the absurdity of existence. His wisdom was born from a mind tangled in existential questions.
The Future I Fear — and Accepting It
One day, I know, I will stand where my parents stand now. After they have gone, I will find myself thinking about them the way they once thought about their parents, hoping they are at peace, wishing for just one more day, one more laugh, one more moment.
And then maybe one day, my own children or grandchildren may think the same of me.
Life doesn’t pause. It doesn’t slow down. It moves with relentless momentum, whether I’m ready or not, without our permission. The fear of death that haunted my childhood hasn’t fully left me, but now it feels different, less like a shadow and more like a reminder. A reminder that life is temporary, fragile, and painfully beautiful.
Maybe the point was never to escape mortality, but to learn how to truly start living and love meaningfully within it.
And then when my time finally comes, i greet death as an old friend, just like the story of the Last brother in The Deathly Hallows “… And he then greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly, departing this life as equals…”
