People keep asking me if I’m okay. It comes in all forms, a gentle, “How are you holding up?” or a blunt, “Are you alright?” Sometimes it’s just a long pause where the silence does the asking for them.

It’s a genuine question, and I’m grateful that they care enough to ask. I know what they expect: unraveling, bitterness, maybe anger at the universe. But the truth?

I feel calm.

The same calm I felt years ago when my father passed away from renal cancer. Not a numbness, not a shutting down. Something steadier. I think it’s because for as long as I can remember, I haven’t seen death as the enemy.

That may sound strange. Death, to many, is supposed to be the villain of our stories. The shadow looming over every celebration. But I can’t bring myself to see it that way. To me, life and death are two sides of the same celebration, inseparable, both worthy of reverence.

This doesn’t mean I don’t feel grief, or sadness, or loss. I do. But it means I can hold them without collapsing. It means I can talk about life and death without flinching. And maybe, just maybe, it means that if I share what’s in my heart, someone else might find a little peace too.

Death Isn’t the Enemy

I don’t remember the first time I realized I wasn’t afraid of the concept of death. It wasn’t some dramatic event, or a brush with mortality. It was quieter, something that settled into me as a child.

I knew even then, that everything ends. Toys break. Summer fades. Pets die. Sure it sucks, I still miss my Taco Bell Chihuahua collection, but I never saw those endings as betrayals. They felt… natural. It just made sense to me, and growing up I always thought that there was something wrong with me to feel that way, but I haven’t seen it that way in a long time.

This doesn’t mean I don’t love life. Quite the opposite.

I love it fiercely.

I love waking up and hearing my son’s laughter echo through the house. I love sipping a bitter cup of coffee and feeling the warmth in my hands. I love making mistakes, feeling embarrassed, learning, trying again. I even love the ache of grief, because it means something mattered enough to hurt when it was gone.

To be alive at all is the most joyful accident the universe could give us.

And so, when I think about death, I don’t picture it stealing something from me. I picture it completing something. Like the last note of a song. Like the moment you turn the final page of a book and close it gently, not because you hated the story, but because it was time to finish.

I don’t claim to know what happens after. I’m not religious, not in any traditional sense. If anything, I’m agnostic. There might be something grand and all-knowing. Or maybe the universe is fumbling forward without purpose, building life the way gravity builds stars…because that’s just what it does. I don’t know. And the beauty is, I don’t need to know.

Don’t worry though, I still plan on living a long life. Planning to hit quadruple digits just to confuse the grandkids’ grandkids. But if death arrives sooner than expected, I hope it finds me with a smile, grateful for every messy, ordinary, extraordinary moment I got.

Stories That Shape Us

A big part of why I see death differently comes from the stories and memories I carry. Many from my culture know this, but other are familiar with it because of my favorite animated move of all time, Pixar’s Coco.

Yes, I’m Mexican, so of course it struck a chord. The music, the colors, the love letter to Día de los Muertos. But more than anything, it was the message: memory is immortality.

I think of my father every year. I tell my son about him, about his laugh, about his stubborn streak that I clearly inherited, and that I know he inherited. I share stories with friends about the things he built, the mistakes he made, the lessons he left behind. I don’t sugar coat it either, if you’re curious you can read about it in” What I Learned from a Flawed Man — DFW Young & Social Club” In doing so, he is still here. Not in the same way, but undeniably present.

That’s the magic, at least for me. Our loved ones don’t truly disappear until the last person who remembers them is gone. Until then, they live on in the ripples they left behind. In the children they raised, the people they loved, the strangers they impacted in ways they never knew.

That’s why Día de los Muertos has always felt so profound to me. It’s not about denying death. It’s about naming it, honoring it, and refusing to let it silence the ones who came before us.

When I tell my grandkids about their great grandfather, they will know the man not as a myth, but as a part of himself. Because everything I am, and everything I will ever be, is stitched together from the people who came before me.

Death may take a body. But memories makes them immortal.

The Tail End

There’s a video by Kurzgesagt called The Tail End that reshaped the way I think about time. It suggests that by the time we reach our twenties, we’ve already spent 90% of the time we will ever spend with our parents.

It sounds shocking, but when you break it down, it’s true.

As kids, we see our parents nearly every day.
As teens, we drift toward independence.
As adults, we might get a few holidays, a couple of weeks a year if we’re lucky.

Add it up, and the math is sobering: the vast majority of your time with your parents is already behind you by the time you’re old enough to drink.

When my dad was diagnosed with a few weeks left to live, this hit me like a freight train. All the time I thought I had left was gone, each day mattered, each day should have always mattered. It made me determined not to let the same thing happen with my mom.

I called her every day. I drove over whenever I could. Eventually, I moved her in with my family. I wanted to reclaim every moment I could, not let it trickle away in hurried visits.

Most people don’t realize this truth until it’s too late. They think they’ll always have another holiday, another summer, another dinner. But the truth is, time isn’t promised, and it’s not endless.

And knowing that — really knowing it — changes the way you live. Which leads me to why I’m here in the first place.

At the Finish Line

My mom has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer. It’s spread to her liver and likely beyond. The kind of diagnosis that doesn’t whisper, but shouts:

This is the end of the race.

And yet, I don’t feel undone. I feel grateful. Grateful that I didn’t accept the “tail end” as my fate. Grateful that I’ve had years of coffee chats, long drives, shared meals, laughter, arguments, and quiet afternoons with her. Grateful that when she reaches her finish line, it won’t feel like I missed the race.

This is not to say it isn’t painful. It is, I’ve cried more times in the last two days than I have in the last 32 years. I know the path I will walk from here. Watching someone you love decline is excruciating. The pain and suffering they will have, the weakness they have from treatments, the never-ending appointments, and words you wish you could unhear during the really bad days.

But there is also life. There will be mornings where she laughs. Moments she plays with my son and can’t stop smiling. Evenings where she eats her favorite meal. Days when the diagnosis isn’t the headline, just the footnote.

And while I’m at the start of that marathon again, but this time I can choose how to spend the steps to the finish line. And for me, that means filling the steps with as much love, joy, and presence as I can.

Goal of the Century

So when people ask me if I’m okay, the answer is complicated. But it’s also simple.

“I love that you’ve asked and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be vulnerable, to be safe. Yes, I’m okay. I’m okay because I don’t see death as the enemy. I see it folded into the same breath that gives us laughter, sorrow, and morning coffee. I want people to keep loving, laughing, and feeling. Let the grief sit in the room and the joy keep walking through it. Because to be alive at all is the rarest, most extraordinary gift.”

Before I close, I want to leave you with what has helped me continue down this path and hold onto this way of seeing things. An album called Angel in Realtime by Gang of Youths is the most deeply personal album I’ve ever heard. It is raw and unapologetically honest, talking about grief, family, identity, and the impossible task of continuing when someone you love is gone. It doesn’t try to fix grief. It just names it, honors it, and builds something beautiful out of it.

The final track, Goal of the Century, feels like both a confession and a benediction. It’s messy and human. It wanders through grief in fragments. The memories of the everyday details, and hard moments of longing — but what lingers is not despair, it’s momentum. The song reminds me that life doesn’t stop in loss. There are still storms, laughter, forgiveness, children on the horizon. It’s a reminder that even in the heaviest seasons, we can be broken and alive at the same time.

That’s what I hold onto. Not just the idea that those I’ve lost are angels in real time, but that I am still here, still moving, still singing in the aftermath. The song doesn’t give answers, but it gives me company in the silence — and sometimes that’s enough.

If you’re carrying grief, let it be a companion for you too.