World Youth Day 1992

My earliest memory might be of when I learned about death. I remember a summer-lit kitchen in the evening, a smooth and relaxing shade among the white countertop and kitchen-set. I see that memory now. Dinner had just ended and our chairs turned towards the kitchen TV. I recall the sunset-lit orange and gold and summer shade in that room in my first house. I remember sitting on my mom’s lap watching the small white TV (currently in my dad’s basement and that same white kitchen-set currently enjoying storage duty and computer room duty in his kitchen). On TV was the Pope. He was in Denver for World Youth Day. The next exchange would grasp onto the air and the space of my psyche; giving direction, constant friction, and necessary speed to every dream, fear, and pursuit I would ever experience in my life. 

“Why is he here?” I asked. 

There was no particular companion in the conversation; I was putting forth a question to anyone or anything that had information. 

I recall my brother responding. 

“He’s here to help us get into heaven.” 

At that point in my life, maybe 3 years old, I had heard of heaven before at church and in school but I figured it was an adult concern and I paid no attention to it while I played with my toys in the long pews at All Souls Catholic. 

“What’s heaven?” 

My brother responded matter-of-factly as an older brother does, “It's where you go when you die.” 

“When I die?” This was something new. 

“We all die. One day everyone will die.” 

“Fuck”, I thought. Or whatever the 3 year old equivalent of that emotion would be.

First, I thought of my parents as I looked at my mom’s eyes. She reluctantly agreed to Casey’s fact. 

Up to this point in my writing and storytelling this conversation has been, and can only be, paraphrased from memory, but I recall the next statement so very well. 

“It’s okay, Mikey; I’ll die before you.” 

An older brother, maybe only 5 years old at the time, comforting his baby brother in the midst of newfound mortality. 

All things are mortal, genetically and generically. But a being becomes Mortal (freely and powerfully alive and freely and powerfully destined to die) only when they learn of the inescapability, the steady, consistent approach, and the cleansing truth of their death, of the ending of all they know and all they feel. I learned about death that day. I learned about mortality that day. I learned about the urgency and pursuit and passion of life. I learned about the ending that makes it worth everything. I became Mortal.