I try not to put myself in a position where I have the potential of dying. But I guess death always has a way of creeping its way into everybody's life, like an annoying song, no matter what station your radio is on you will hear this annoying overplayed song that you already heard a million times today. I assume that people underestimate the word death. In our society today, people make jokes about death, video games about how death isn’t a plausible thing, and movies that are the pushing the envelope of death. What I’m saying is that death is everything in your life coming to an end. After I realized that two feet was the difference of me being alive or dead I’ve been using every second of my life like it’s my last.

I was playing in a hockey tournament and I was twelve years old. We had just won our first game. Going into the corner this time I felt confident. This kid can’t possibly hit me because I’m not facing him. My only focus is the puck and what I was going to do once I had it. The sound of the fiberglass sticks slashing each other and the ref screaming

“MOVE IT, MOVE IT!” What seems like a minute of battling ended abruptly, the kid hadn’t stopped and proceeded to hit me like an angry bull scanning for his next victim. I was out cold and I was left in my thoughts. Only one thought had stood out to me. “Am I dead? Is this what it's like to die. Just be lost here in my thoughts”.

“Is he getting up?”
“Nikolai can you see me?”

“Can you hear me?” None of these questions were helping the fact that I can hardly think without my head exploding. I could feel the arctic breeze from the ice cooling my hand. I have to be lucky to be feeling anything at all right now. I started to make some details out of who was standing around me. The ref, my coach and some kids that I think they were on the ice with me.

“Nikolai, what is the date?” My coach was looking at me with concern. Why would you ask me the date? So I just gave him a blank stare.

“Wednesday?” Apparently it was Saturday in the middle of March. I had to get undressed in front of both of my parents but I didn’t care my head was in so much pain. In the car worrying about every bump because it hurt each time we had hit one. We pulled up to this Beaumont hospital. My dad got me a wheelchair and wheeled me in. Tired as I was from the game, I just wanted to nap. I don’t know why they wouldn’t let me. I had to stay awake. I had been hit from behind and went head first into the boards. The nurse had gone and got a gurney,

“There is no more rooms left, but this should be fine.” I saw people being rushed through the hospital like they could die if they don’t attend to them right away. I left in a neck brace and a severe concussion. The doctor told my dad that if I had been two more feet from the boards, I could have been dead or paralyzed. Death had creeped up on my life, but like every annoying overplayed song, they eventually fade away.
Right as I was leaving the hospital, it hit me that I almost died. Everything could have been over. I’ve realized that I should start living life to the fullest. Since then, I have been doing whatever I can in my life. I have been going to every concert that I can go to, playing hockey but with more caution and awareness of the game, spending a lot of time with the people that I care about the most.