Death & Dying as an Elder Goth
I have always seen death as a natural part of living. Despite the tragedy of it, there’s no stopping it no matter how hard you might try. I’m a horror fan, my holiday tree has a skeleton on top of it, and I love hanging out in cemeteries (peaceful, beautiful, and nobody to interact with). I had my first Friday the 13th party when I was nearly 13 years old. I found being “Goth” in 1998 when the internet came into our school library for the first time. It was so much like finally finding my family; a whole subculture dedicated to being spooky and wearing my favorite color! In the end, it wasn’t all I’d expected it to be but, MAN, I had a great time. I hung out with old goth bands, DJed, and partied in ways that some might wish they could have. I slept with aspiring models, got free drinks everywhere I went, and was invited to the good parties. I lived so much in 5 years that, in retrospect, it’s crazy to realize it was only 5 years. When I turned 27, I started to feel like it was time to figure out what I wanted to do other than party.
I met my partner about 4 months before my 28th birthday, and I knew pretty quickly that I had met the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Thankfully, the feeling was mutual. But, truth be told, I had no idea what that would look like then. I tried to pull my partner into the tornado of my partying lifestyle for a bit, but they were always more of a cautious homebody than a rockstar. We balanced each other out well; I showed my partner what they had been missing out on, and they gave me the stability I had truly craved all those years. When we decided to have a baby together, I was already at the tail-end of that life, moving into a new one. The majority of it fell away pretty quickly after the first trimester, and what was left trickled away until gone, when I got pregnant with my second child. And I really really tried to live the “mama” life, but it just wasn’t me. Within another five years, every last vestige of my former me was gone (except the wearing black, never stopped that).
Life has moved on far too quickly now, and everything has changed. I have many scars from my partying days and a story behind each one. Shamefully, I drove drunk on a handful of occasions. I met people on the internet for dates. I drove in the cars of strangers. I smoked Djarum clove cigarettes, as was the fashion for Goths of the era, until I got pneumonia more than six times. I always saw death as a natural part of living, but it wasn’t even that. I just didn’t care — not about death, not about my quality of life, not about my future. Suddenly, I am over 40 without a single clue how I made it this far. Of course, I changed my drinking habits, stopped smoking long ago, and exist far safer than I did those years. And, honestly, I think that might just be the way of things. My partner was a nervous person and did far less than I did, but there were still some questionable choices. Brain development science supports my hypothesis that we all go a little crazy between 18 and 25.
When I heard that my brother, only five years my senior, had what he termed a “minor cardiac event,” all those people who say that your best years are still ahead after 40 were full of shit. My thought to continue to pursue my MFA (or even a PhD maybe) feels like a race that I started very late at. Getting a novel published, let alone a couple, seems to be a dream I no longer have the time to grow. And, for the first time in life, I am afraid of death. My kids are 8 and almost 12. I am still figuring out my career path. I haven’t had anywhere near enough time with my partner at only 15 years. Even if I get five more years, I will miss all the great things life still has to offer. Sure, my mom is 71, but has Dementia and/or Alzheimer’s. Sure, my dad is still alive at 76, but has been in and out of hospitals for the past couple of years. Would another 35 years even be enough for me?
I still have skulls and skeletons all over my house. I don’t listen to the old music as much anymore; I’m definitely more of a metalhead than I was back in the gatekeep-y days of the early- to mid/late-2000s Goth scene. I am sitting in my room above a bright street with Jacarandas in full bloom, at my writing desk with a statue of an open book with Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” printed in it. In the end, I would be sad to never see the Jacarandas in bloom again. My aesthetics haven’t changed much over time, but so much about me is so different than who I used to be. Now it is all a mish-mosh of the me’s I have been. But I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not even soon. Skeletons are always waiting. There are still more seasons to see, more plants to grow, and more stories to live & write. There is so much Halloween stuff to buy and display so that I can pretend I still accept death & dying as a part of life.
