For my new job I have a 30 day training plan. Week 1 was just shadowing with the people at my home location and just getting the feel for the funeral home and getting my desk set up yada yada. Week 2 starts tomorrow and I'm supposed to go to what we call the "care center" which is where all the embalmbing happens and it's intense in there, I'm supposed to shadow the morticians for half the week and then shadow our transfer teams the rest of the week. Transfer team is the people who go out and retrieve the deceased people from say hospitals, hospice, treatment centers, and residential homes etc.. Basically just, starting tomorrow it's going to be an extremely challenging week... wish me fucking luck yall I'm going to be very very up close and personal with the dead like I've never been before and bitch I'm nervous!!
alright this has been sitting in my mind ever since i first heard it a few days ago, but what Emmrich says about his fear of death in his first scene? It hit differently. Im gonna elaborate underneath the cut.
(also this might be too much personal info for some, but anyways)
'Thats when I discovered I possess a great terror of dying' is putting something I have felt for close to 3 years now so... precisely into words.
I have spend so much trying to find words for this feeling, for this fear, and have not yet managed to communicate it with anyone really so far, because the words have just... not been there.
'It goes beyond dread. It cant be reasoned with or soothed over. It comes without warning, in the dead of night, in sunlit streets. A raw, strangling fear, struck somewhere deep past the heart.'
It hides behind every corner of your life. You can go on with your day like any other person, you can be alone at home or out with friends, seeing the world, and suddenly youre hit with this 'someday it wont matter anymore and you wont feel this feeling and never smell the air again' and you cant outrun it.
Its something you cant change, something maybe not even worth mentioning because there is no way out anyways, so why bother and try to find a reason within it, when there is non to begin with?
'Oddly, I discovered I wasnt alone. I debated this fear with friends, I argued with teachers... Yet... It lingered.'
Others might feel the same, and yes its comforting to a degree, but still it wont make it go away. It wont make it better or unbearable somehow. Because its unreasonable. You know it is. Thats why Ive burried it so deep within me and try not to spiral into despair when these thoughts occure.
I am not really sure where I am heading with this but I guess I needed to get these thoughts out into the world somehow. Because hearing this, having it put into words so nicely? It helped. It made me shiver and it has lingered in my head for a while now, but it also gave me words for something I have not yet come around wording myself.
We drove all night Thursday. We arrived at 2 am. He didn't wake at all Friday. This morning when we got to his room, he was awake.
I don't know if he knows I'm here. I told him I loved him and I held his hand. It has been... hard. Harder than I thought because we've been estranged since I told him I had cancer (I've since got a discharge from the Cancer Centre). We haven't talked since August 2023.
The thing is I don't regret it. I Needed that time to heal. Not only physically but emotionally and mentally.
He has never taken care of himself plus he was an alcoholic. He was never a good father to me. He would help me every once in awhile but he was never reliable. He was a nasty drunk. I never engaged if he was drunk because he would make promises that'd he'd never keep. This meant that when he retired we hardly spoke because he wouldn't drink until his days off. That never happened after retirement. Sober, he was a different person and I saw less and less of that as time went on.
When I called to tell him I had breast cancer, him and my brother laughed it off. That moment has been seared in my mind. I have never gotten a phone call until a few days ago. No calls, no other inquiries to find out how I was or what kind of treatment I was going through. From either of them.
I have to go home at some point. My husband has to go back to work, even though his coworkers and boss have been amazing and very supportive giving him more time that was government mandated.
Depending on how things progress, the doctor said he could last hours, days, weeks or even months. I can always come back to help my brother. I hope, though, that it's quick. I don't want him to suffer. He made the conscious choice to be moved to palliative care. His decline has been swift since then. They have been giving him pain meds every 2 to 3 hours rather than the usual 4 and have upped the dosage as well.
((Promptspiration:
@whumptober 2023: day 16:
Would you lie with me and just forget the world? / "Don't go where I can't follow." ))
Genre: angst / romance
Romance level: high
Angst level: 5/5
Draco's headspace: tragic / calm
((words: ~900))
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"Maybe I'll become a ghost."
Draco was lying with his head in Theo's lap, tucked under a layer of self-warming blanket, too weak to move. It was his week off the potions that kept him functional, something he now did only once a year, and it was terrifying to see. His breaths were very, very slow and shallow, and his heartbeat was very fast and faint. He couldn't eat. He couldn't stand. He could barely lift his head. Even his thoughts were slow and hazy, robbing him of that final fundamental spark of what made him Draco. He was a frail husk, a shell of himself.
"Wander around, talking to people…" His voice was barely a murmur, distant and idly musing. "I like doing that…"
Theo set his hand on Draco's arm, rubbing gently. "You don't want to do that."
Draco didn't answer, and he turned his attention back to the Time Turner he was working on; Draco was too out of it to notice what he was doing, so he could work with it openly.
He had it half-disassembled when Draco spoke again. He'd thought he'd actually fallen asleep, but apparently he was just thinking about it. "Maybe I do…"
He glanced down. "No one wants to be a ghost."
"Ghosts don't have to eat… or sleep… or breathe… I can have all the parts of being alive I like without all the bad parts…"
"Ghosts can't touch anything."
"That's okay."
"Rude." He ran his fingers through Draco's hair lightly. "Ghosts can't do magic, either. You love doing magic."
"Ghosts can't touch wands… Might be fun to test if they can do wandless magic… I can do wandless magic."
"Draco." He set down the pieces of the Time Turner and pulled Draco's hair back from his face, bending over to look at him. Draco opened his eyes to meet his. "Stop."
Draco didn't say anything, and that was the scariest thing of all — because that meant maybe it wasn't just a tasteless joke. Maybe it was actually a plan for his future. Or maybe it was just an insane idea for now, but when he properly had his mind back, it would stick with him and it would become a plan.
According to everything they knew, becoming a ghost was a rare and unintentional phenomenon, but if there was anyone who would do it intentionally through research and sheer willpower, it would be Draco.
And according to everything they knew, it was a tragic, unenviable fate and could never be taken back… but if there was anyone who would, actually, enjoy that state of being… maybe it was Draco. Nothing he was saying was wrong. The lack of little pleasures regarded as the small tortures of ghostly unlife, the inability to rest or find simple joys in food and physical contact, he was already suffering most of them. He genuinely did like the idea of talking and socialising almost without end. He liked new experiences and would enjoy seeing how the world changed over time. Maybe it actually did sound appealing to him.
Theo couldn't bear that thought. Even more than the thought of him dying, the thought of him dying and then coming back like that, trapped forever in some parody of life where he could never grow or find rest… it was beyond horrifying. And the idea that he might actively chase that fate, do it to himself out of fear of death or some misguided idealisation…
"I could haunt the Ministry," Draco murmured instead, eyes settling closed again. "Spend the next thousand years advising the Minister for Magic. I'll be the Ghost Minister."
"If that were allowed there would already be ghosts doing it."
"But I'm a Malfoy. I'll change the rules." He smiled a little bit. "And then there will always be a Malfoy."
He was not reassured. He ran his fingers through Draco's hair again, wrestling with the uneasy feeling. "Draco," he said eventually. Draco's eyes opened again and looked up at him. "I don't want to be a ghost." Draco's expression grew solemn. He settled his hand on Draco's frail chest. "If you go there, I'm not going with you. You'll be alone."
"I'll stay with you."
"And then I'll die," he explained patiently. "And your parents will die. And you'll be alone."
Draco was silent, and looked back out toward nothing, but he didn't look like that had reached him. Like he thought he could still get around that. "Unless you're planning to make me stay with you?"
"I don't want to do that," Draco murmured. He painstakingly worked his hand free of the blanket and held his.
He lifted Draco's hand and kissed the back of it. "I know," he said, and then tucked it back against his chest so he could stay warm. "But it's okay. I'm not going to let you die anyway, remember? I made a promise." He took his hand back and returned his attention to the Time Turner.
"I remember," Draco said quietly. "You'll never leave me alone."
"And I won't let you die," he repeated, carefully dumping out the sand.
Draco was quiet. He got back into his work, assuming that he fell asleep again, although when he looked down some time later it was to find Draco silently looking up at him, and he ran his hand over his hair again.
I’m just thinking about Thorin deciding that if he was going to get taken down, he would take Azog down with him. And then about how he probably assumed he would die alone there on the ice, or maybe he wasn’t thinking about anything at all, and then Bilbo is there gripping his hand and giving him a precious last chance to make amends. And Bilbo had never thought that anything that had happened on this whole journey would ever happen to him, and he’s having to cope with every new heavy thing he experiences. And Thorin is probably feeling ten things at once as he tries to apologize--not five minutes ago, he was recklessly fighting one of the most dangerous enemies he could ever face and not shying away, because his nephews were already dead. Then Azog is dead, and the eagles came to their aid. And so on the ice, dying there, he has absolutely nothing to lose. (I wonder if this is the first time in a long time that he hasn’t been burdened by what he needs to do next.)
And Bilbo, before all of this, had probably thought about far off places, elves and men and dwarves, like some kind of impossible daydream. Then he was there, living it all, feeling more and more like the world really is a big place, but it could crush you so easily. He had his ideas of what the world was like, then he found out with his own eyes! It almost kills him so many times. Then he has to come back to his normal. And I wonder if he ever had hopes and dreams the same way ever again. What does the future look like to someone who witnessed a dream rise and fall in only a year?
Sombra winced as she felt the other woman press the gauze against her wound to try to staunch the bleeding, a good effort to be sure but she had her doubts it would be enough. Even now, the hacker was finding it difficult to stay awake, and given that she was coughing up blood, it was likely she had internal injuries as well.
"Heh... i-if you say so, Ames..." True, most people wouldn't have noticed anything different about Widowmaker's demeanour in this situation, but Sombra had definitely picked up on it.
"L-listen, I'm gonna hold out as long as I can, but... if I d-don't make it..." She reached up with her free hand to brush her hair aside, revealing the chipslot in the side if her head, a datashard slotted into it. "D-data's on the shard... If I don't pull through, take it and hand it in for me... alright?"
