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My first death experience happened in water. It was a sunny afternoon in the summer after 9th grade, and my friends were swimming, and I was bathing because I still was too chicken to swim. 

The river Chumysh that my hometown stands on is known for its treacherous “double” bottom. Lumber used to be transported downstream by the river, and the trunks that sank created traps that, legend had it, took careless swimmers’ lives now and then. But that is not what happened to me.

Having fun and splashing everyone, somehow I happened to get into deep water, and within a second I was under in muffled silence and light water above me. I just stood there and decided that was it; that was the day I would die. I imagined my mom would be upset and would cry, but then my thoughts quickly turned to my funeral organization issues. Wondering who would serve my panikhida: father Andrey or father Sergiy, I was watching my friends’ teared up faces singing the psalms and hymns for the dead me: “Give rest, O Christ, among the Saints to the soul of Your servant, where there is no pain, no sorrow, no grieving, but life everlasting.” I believe I was still in the middle of singing the sad melody of this Kontakion in my head when my friend Vitya pushed me from behind, and I made two steps forward under the water. Those two steps were all I needed, apparently, to get my head above the surface and stay alive.

The second death encounter was with the air, or lack thereof. It was a night during a pilgrimage, at someone’s house in a village on the way. The hostess had her home full with a couple of clergymen, a bunch of altar boys and choir girls, including me. She also had her home full with cats, who all came home after a long summer day wandering outdoors. I started with my regular watery eyes and sneezing right after dinner; with no allergy pills at hand, my only hope was to fall asleep quickly and have the symptoms subside. 

Once everyone was peacefully snuffling or carelessly snoring in their sleep, I was still up anxiously trying to stay quiet while wheezing air in. Breathing got difficult, and I was pumping air with my whole chest and still not getting enough. My imagination was running a scenario where the next morning I would be found suffocated and dead, and wearing a nightie! What a shame. Another route my oxygen-starved brain rejected was to wake people up and ask for help. That would inconvenience everyone after a long hard day of walking and praying so much, and I just did not have the heart to do that.

Since to die or not to die in the house was not even the question, in the last impulse to live, I dragged myself and a thin blanket to the porch. There, I was conveniently found in the morning, slightly blue and really cold, but alive. My chest muscles were sore for a couple of days after.

2

My next encounter with death was not quite as obvious, and it took me years to even clock the slow suffocation of burying oneself one handful of dirt and intentional misunderstanding at a time.

When I married at the age of 22,  my sincere and absolute belief was that only death would part me from my then husband. And it turned out to be true, except it was the death of my married-once-and-for-life identity. She went painfully, grabbing at every chance however slim to survive. Months of deep chronic grief followed the final burial, and I still call it one of my most labor-intense achievements – letting that version of me die. 

The academic overachiever took over the reins after the family woman was dead. Spoiler alert: she died next. And that death was from burning out. 

It was an ordinary day in my grad-school-attending PhD-earning one-child-single-handedly-rearing two-jobs-working life when I decided to hand-draw a table and write down my values, my priorities and my actual everyday activities. The goal was to figure out why I was at my wit’s end most of the time, because it seemed I should have enjoyed my life way more than I did doing things I loved. 

The Virgo in me with her passion for clean organization rejoiced at the opportunity to try and place life neatly into the three columns. I ranked the values, outlined the should-be priorities, and eagerly started on the daily routines. That’s where the misalignment begrudgingly showed itself: most of my time was consumed by my academic work, followed by teaching jobs, leaving very little behind for friends, my body, soul, and my daughter. And this visually inverse picture of my life finally made it clear why I had felt backwards while supposedly kicking ass. 

I mourned Olga Last Name, PhD, while quietly quitting academia: withdrawing attention, taking back effort, doing sad math on the 7-year time investment returns. Another life and a new version of me emerged from the ashes of that burnout, and I am grateful for the sacrifice.

3

A few months ago I hiked up a hill in Sabino Canyon and sat down to have a sip of water and a snack. The Catalina mountains, monumental in their aged stillness, green saguaros towering over other desert plants, a light breeze carrying the feeling of life and resilience in the heat of the morning – I took it all in one breath and let out a long one out. A meme I had seen the day before came to mind: “When you hike in nature and do not see wild animals, they still see you.” I imagined a mountain lion watching me as I sat on a rock snacking on almonds and prunes and wondered what it would feel like if the cat attacked. 

The teeth, sharp in a powerful jaw, biting through the skin on my arms; the claws digging into the body. The scary thing was that the thought did not scare me. It just felt like just another experience, like a rollercoaster at a fair, or sky diving from ten thousand feet. I imagined fighting back: I would go for the neck and try to choke the animal, I thought. I did not have a stake in either outcome though: I could kill the cat, or I could die and feed it. It’s just life.

A small panicky voice came through from a different corner of the consciousness: “What about my daughter? What would happen to her without me?” – “She would be ok: I have given her the sturdy foundations she can build upon, and she is strong, and she would be taken care of by people.” – “I am so young!” – “I have lived and I have died, and I have known love.” 

I took a deep breath, felt the smells, the breeze, the quiet, threw another almond in my mouth and stood up from the rock unscathed by unseen mountain lions, but slightly changed by them.