I’ve always imagined Death to come in the form of a woman. Despite Her job description of reaping souls for a living, I pictured Her to be heavenly in every sense of the word. I’ve compared Her to Michelangelo's finest creations before, but even that doesn’t truly do Her image justice in my mind. But, then again, this was all just in my imagination.

Until a month ago, when I shook Death’s hand for the first time.

It was a stormy, Sunday evening: which, personally, is just too ironic. The most important days of my life have always been accompanied by storms, and this day would be no different. I’ve always had this… affinity for hurricanes. Maybe that explains why I become the eye of the hurricane in the most traumatic of situations; why I shift from a being of pure, mental mayhem into a woman of true tranquility. I have never felt more like the eye of the hurricane other than that fateful Sunday evening.  

But first: some context.

I’ve always been so desperate to help people, even if it puts myself in harms way. Hence, where my passion to become an ER doctor erupted. Growing up, I always dreamed of the people I would someday save and the countless lives that I would change. However, over the past few years, it was as if a hand had reached into my soul and turned that flaming ball of passion for medicine off without any rhyme or reason. I was left with nothing but singed hands and the remnants of what was once a raging fire. But, I picked up some flint and attempted to reignite the fire once more by applying for a job in the emergency room of the top hospital in the nation: Cleveland Clinic.

Now: back to the story.

As I walked through the bright white halls of the ER for the first time over six months later, I could tell: today was going to be different -- something was going to change. I don’t know how I knew this, and I wish I could explain the feelings I encountered as I observed my new and unfamiliar surroundings. The simplest way that I can describe it is familial. I felt inexplicably at home, and I began to feel the calamities of the world wash away as I got settled into the tasks that my volunteering position required.

A scream of pain pulled me out of my trance-inducing tasks.

A woman, my mother’s age, was clutching her chest through tears as her husband wheeled her in. Her wails of utter torment ricocheted off of the pristine walls leading into the trauma center. Initially, I didn’t think anything of it. My mind was still wrapped around a man that I had just witnessed succumb to a code blue three times in rapid succession, only to make it out alive once he heard the voice of his wife.

That was my first lesson of the day: nothing is more powerful than the human capacity of love.

As the woman was wheeled away, I quickly settled back into my tasks. However, everything changed when the code blue sirens began once more. It was then that I realized that I could no longer hear the wailing woman. The silence that she left was eerie as I sprung into action. I ran after the doctors and watched, helplessly, as they crowded around her bed. I watched as a man administered a bedside catheter. I watched as blood collected across her abdomen and began to tell a story of its own.

I watched: lesson number two of the day.

My eyes raced from doctor to doctor as they ceased their actions and the exact time of her death rang out in the air.

I took in a deep breath.

I had just watched a woman die.

To this day, I have never felt more like the eye of the hurricane than that singular moment at 15:55 on that stormy Sunday in March when I shook death’s cold and ancient hand for the first time.

Lesson three: no human shall ever be invincible to death.

It was while watching the sunrise after her death in which I finally pieced together the entirety of this third lesson. The colors were so blinding that any normal human being would’ve shielded their eyes, but I couldn’t. I needed to enjoy this moment, and every moment in the future, for her, because never again would she be able to watch a sunrise. Never again would she feel the rays of the sun tickling her face as it provided the world with life. Never again would she be able to marvel at the beauty of the world. Never again would her poor husband be able to feel joy.

This immortal and maternal being: She stops for no-one. We’re all human. Some of us may feel like hurricanes. Some of us may feel like tsunamis. Some of us may feel like tornadoes. But, when it comes down to it, we are all so undeniably human, and any day could potentially be our last.

Her death reignited the fire within me.

And for that, I owe her everything.