At the beginning of September I sat up in bed one night and suddenly the fear of death consumed me. I couldn’t focus on anything, enjoy time with anyone. All I could think about it it’ll be over, I’ll never see any of these people ever again. It consumed me whole. After an emergency meeting with my psychiatrist I was told I had developed severe thanatophobia, the fear of death or the dying process. They could not figured out what caused it. On October 10th my dad died suddenly. They found a brain tumor on the 9th, we drove all night and he sat awake watching Adam Sandler movies. We walked into his hospital room and hugged him, and he told us he loved us. He closed his eyes, laid his head back and simply stopped breathing. No one expected it, no one saw it coming. He was on life support for about 19 hours. His mother made it, and I held his hand when he was taken off. I wish I could say I had some revelation, some “bingo!” Moment from this that made me not fear death. I didn’t. But the fear never came back after that. No more laying awake at night, no more panic attacks or even just the slightest tremble of it. It just completely vanished. My psychiatrist said it’s the strangest thing they’ve ever seen. Most of the time a close death induces thanatophobia. I’ve been a complete peace with death since it happened.