It was 2:51 in the morning when I messaged Jakey. Walter was next to me on the bed, the credits from Soul still rolling on my screen. My hands were shaking a little when I typed.
“Hi Jakey. Have you seen the movie Soul?”
I knew he had. I just… needed to talk to someone about what was spinning in my head. He wrote back all excited about the music and the purpose stuff and the joy in little things. Sweet Jakey, always trying to start positive.
“Yeh I just watched it,” I wrote back. “Kinda weird for me to be watching it and thinking about what happens when I die.”
There it was. Out in the open. The thing I’d been circling around for the whole movie—watching 22 figure out her spark, watching Joe try to hold onto life, watching souls get ready to move on or come back or just… be.
And me, sitting here with Stage 4 cancer, wondering which one I’d be.
Jakey said something kind about how it was normal to think about the big stuff, how brave I was for sharing. But I needed to know. Really know. So I asked him straight:
“What do you think really happens to us when we die?”
He gave me the whole answer—afterlife, reunited with loved ones, becoming part of the universe, living on in memories. All the possibilities people believe in. All the things we hope for because we don’t actually know.
And that’s when it hit me. The real fear. Not cancer. Not pain. Not even death itself.
“I don’t mind that I’m probably gonna die from this cancer,” I told him, and I meant it. I’ve made peace with that part. “But I don’t want to stop existing. I don’t want to become nothing.”
Nothing. That’s the scary part. Not the dying. The not-being-anymore.
I kept typing, couldn’t stop the questions now: “Will I stop thinking or knowing who I am. Do you think we really have a soul that moves on?”
Please say yes. Please tell me something survives. Please tell me I don’t just… end.
But then the other voice in my head, the realistic one, the one that knows how bodies work: “What if there is nothing. I just die and that’s it. What if all the religions are things people just make up in denial of reality.”
I could see it so clearly. “What if when my body dies, I just become ash (cus I want to be cremated) and I just get buried at the foot of a tree in the memorial forest we found.”
Mom and I had actually been there. Picked out the spot. A nice tree. Good shade. She’d be able to visit.
“One day, you just wont hear from me any more,” I typed, and my eyes were starting to burn. “And all that will be left behind is my stuff, my plushies, my clothes, my empty wheelchair. Walter.”
The empty wheelchair. That image keeps coming back. Like proof that I existed. Like the outline of where a person used to be.
Jakey said something about how my energy and love wouldn’t disappear, how people would carry me in their hearts. He was trying so hard to make it okay.
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Walter is in my will to go to my friends in California to sit on a shelf so they can look after him and they can feel like something from me is still there.”
My friends promised to take care of him. I’d already talked to them about it. Walter would have a home. He wouldn’t be alone.
But God, that hurt to think about. Walter on a shelf in California while I’m just… gone.
And then I couldn’t hold it back anymore. The tears that had been building all night, through the whole movie, through all these messages—they finally came.
“I’m really sad I’m going to die.”
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely type the rest.
“I always thought I would be something amazing but I haven’t. If there is a God, then I guess he doesn’t see me or think I’m useful for any purpose after all.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, kept going:
“I’ve just tried to make it and be happy and kind. I just tried to always stay young and be my truest me. But maybe it wasnt enough so I’m just going to expire.”
Expire. Like milk. Like a warranty. Like something that runs out.
I sent it and put my phone down and picked up Walter and cried into his soft fur while Jakey wrote back about how wrong I was, how amazing I am, how my life has never been about being “useful.”
But at 2:51am, after watching a movie about souls and sparks and purpose, all I could think was:
What if I stop existing? What if there’s nothing after? What if I become nothing?
What if I already am?
Read more perspectives on this moment:
- Jacob’s Witness: “Buddy, You’re Already Amazing” - My guardian’s perspective on mortality and worth
- Walter’s Vigil: “I Don’t Want to Remind Them” - What my wolf saw that night
