I feel his arms slack around me, I hear his final breath escape his mouth, I smell my fear in the air surrounding us, and I taste the bile slowly rising in my mouth. Finally brave enough to look at his face, I raise my head and see the lifelessness in his eyes, the stillness of his chest, and the freaky resemblance to a statue. He’s dead. My dad is dead. This is the moment when I began to believe that the price to pay for life is death.
            It was a fierce and freezing February night when my dad passed away, but that chill was nothing compared to the ice surrounding my heart. The iciness spread from my heart branching out to encompass my whole body, chilling me to my bones. Laying side by side, my dad and I both lay frozen like statues, but the difference between these statues was that one was a true statue, and the other dreamed that it was.
            The moment that I fully comprehended that my dad’s spirit no longer inhabited his body I realized that part of me died along with my dad, and I couldn’t help but wish that all of me did. The full impact of my dad dying had finally reached my brain, enveloping every dark crevice of my mind, numbing me to my core. In that moment all I could hear was my heart beating, thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. All I could focus on was the sound of my heart beat and the image of my dad lying in his bed, frozen. I broke out of my numbing haze when I began to taste salt water and realized that I was crying. My tears by now had gathered in a puddle on my dad’s shirt, and I lost it. I felt as if I were the Hoover Dam and couldn’t take the pressure anymore and finally collapsed. 
            I cried for what felt like ages, my feelings warring between anger and sorrow. I smacked at my dad’s chest and I cried as I clung to his lifeless body, until I realize that I was tearlessly crying, having run out of tears long ago. As I continued to cry I began to realize that the sorrow and pain that I was feeling was what suffering felt like, and it dawned on me that this moment wouldn’t be my last moment of suffering, I would suffer for the rest of my life. Whether that suffering is little or big, I would suffer no matter what. This knowledge aged my spirit from a naïve and vibrant spirit to a mature and subdued soul. My soul didn’t just change because of my dad’s death it changed because of the new knowledge I gained that night. When I began to believe that the dying and suffering are inevitable parts of life, and that the price to pay for living is dying, I was a new person.
            My dad’s death left scars on my mind, body, and soul, that everyday remind me of the price of life. I can still feel the ghost of my tears running their paths down my face every time I look back at that cold, dreadful night. Death is a wall we hit. No matter how hard we try to escape it, we can’t. Death and suffering are both inescapable parts of life, but suffering is conquerable, death is not. Therefore, every time I suffer I realize that I am receiving a little taste of death.
            In the days, weeks, months, and years that followed my dad’s death, I suffered a lot. I didn’t just suffer from the aftermath of the storm my dad’s death caused, I also suffered in the ways every living thing does, through the regular trials and tribulations of life. Each time I faced an obstacle throughout my life I confronted it with optimism, and remember that each time I suffer, I only taste death, and I am not actually dead. Each little taste of death makes me grateful that they are only small pieces of death, and that my struggles are not as bad as others around the world. My belief that the price to pay for living is dying, has allowed me to appreciate everything in life, even the deadly and awful things that come with it. I am grateful for every day I suffer because, I am alive. Today my price is not yet due; therefore I can appreciate my life for one more day.