I came into the world four months early, with a black eye and a swollen lip. Life had given me a beating before I even had the chance to defend myself. I had arrived too early to the party of the living and was punished for my eagerness.

I weighed just under four pounds when I arrived at the threshold of the living, and I was not expected to disembark with my soul intact. Those involved with the affairs concerning my fate were so confident in the denial of my life, that upon signs of labor, they sent for a priest to administer last rights. I like to imagine this priest standing at my mother’s bedside, with his white collar peeking over a surgical gown, gripping his bible and glass vial of holy water. Denied.

If it had turned out in favor of their imaginations, or who knows really, their preferred outcome, I would have been forever known in the family as number five. “The dead baby.”

As it happened, I survived the gauntlet of birth and entered the ring of life victorious, if not incredibly motivated. Though I was placed into a plastic box for many weeks, I was merely healing from battle, a battle that was prematurely thrust upon me.

After a lifetime of more battles, just and unjust wars, and self created skirmishes, I will take my last breath, and they will yet again place me inside a box. The priest will close his bible, and with heartfelt satisfaction, distribute wide arcs of blessed water.

I like to believe that in the end, our death comes to us as a tremendous relief, where the soul that has been banging around inside of us to the point of exhaustion, heaves a great sigh of satisfaction and joy.

Sometimes, when I ponder the moment of my passing, I am overcome with anxiety. I pray it is less violent and terrifying than my birth. I hope that my life fulfills the necessary trials required for a peaceful death. I pray that I do not have to fight my way out, but I will if I have to.