The first time I realized I was going to die I was cutting out an obituary for a project for my 6th grade class. I was working on the living room floor, as my father slouched nearby on the brown couch, reading. My eyes suddenly focused in on the age of the dead person in the newspaper—I can’t remember it now—and then something clicked. “This person died,” I told my dad, startled. “I’m going to die someday, too.” I then felt a surge of panic, of a kind I would become accustomed to in the years to come. My dad looked up from his book and said: “Yes, but not tonight.”
