Facing Death: Stories about confronting one's mortality

Confronting death can lead to personal growth, newfound appreciation for life, and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share their experiences of grappling with the fragility of life.

Part 1: On a flight to St. Louis, the plane Brad Lawrence is on, needs to make an emergency landing.

Brad Lawrence is a story producer for the RISK! Podcast, a storyteller, and solo show performer who has performed to sold out crowds around the United States and in the UK. He has co-produced and performed in storytelling, solo, and variety shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, South By Southwest Interactive, and in conjunction with WBUR, USA Television Network, Casper Mattress, and Grant’s Whiskey. He has taught Storytelling for Business and Corporate Professionals and lead workshops for Fortune 500 companies in the US and in Europe. He has appeared on the Savage Love and The Moth Podcast and MainStage and many others. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s. Hotsy Totsy Burlesque, the burlesque send up of popular culture that he co-produces with his wife Cyndi Freeman, has been featured in the New York Times twice and makes sold out crowds very happy each month at the legendary Slipper Room.

Part 2: While Keven Griffen is doing field work in Sierra Nevada a wildfire breaks out.

Keven Griffen is a scientist-in-progress who loves to spend time outside, snuggle their little dog, and go to sleep by 9 PM (also known as field scientist midnight).

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I am halfway through a three‑hour flight from New York to St. Louis where my mother and sister live. It is drinks service and the flight attendant has gotten to my row and she has made eye contact with me. You can see her forming the words, “Would you like something to drink,” when, suddenly, the plane begins to make this noise. It is like someone firing up a cement cutter inside a steel pipe. It is everywhere at once. It just completely fills the plane.

Brad Lawrence shares his story at Kraine Theater in New York, NY in November 2023. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I turn and look around, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. And here's a little inside secret. I do not know how planes work. So when it starts making this sound, I just kind of think to myself, "Okay, this is a sound that airplanes can make."

Then I turn back to the flight attendant. It's a woman in her 40s, clearly a veteran of the airline industry. She has probably heard every sound an airplane can make. And from the stricken, ashen look on her face, I can tell this is not one of them.

She looks me and she says, "I'll be right back." And then she sort of stands bolt upright and she walks back up the aisle to the front of the plane and she gets on the phone to the cockpit. She's talking to the cockpit for a bit and then the other flight attendant joins her up there.

Then she toggles off from the cockpit. She toggles back on to the intercom and she says, “Ladies and gentlemen, this airplane has experienced a mechanical issue and we are making an emergency landing. Please return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts and await instructions.”

And then it is quiet, aside from this droning noise that is continuing. Everybody is just sort of staring ahead.

Now, Cecily, that's the flight attendant's name, she is back at my row because I am sitting in the emergency exit row. It is me and like six big dudes and one very small woman.

Cecily repeats the question they ask you when you first get on the plane and she says, "Do you feel that you can assist in case of an emergency landing, which is going to happen?" And everyone nods, but for the very small woman who raises her hand, basically admitting that she lied the first time. And so Cecily swaps her out with like a fireman.

Then she starts giving us the instructions. She takes all of our names, and then she says, "When the plane lands, if you hear me call your name, immediately pop the emergency exit door, the inflatable slide will inflate, begin guiding people to that slide. If the plane lands and you do not hear me call your name, if I am incapacitated, if there is smoke in the cabin, if there is fire in the cabin, immediately open your emergency door. Do not wait for a signal and guide people out onto the slide.”

And she says, "We are going to try to find a safe place to land, but this could be a water landing.”

We are over western Pennsylvania. Water landing is what? Are we talking like the Allentown public pool? What's the plan?

Before I can ask any of this, Cecily has turned around and gone back up towards the front of the cabin and I look at the kid next to me. He looks just like this fresh‑faced 19‑year‑old. He looks like a high school all‑star, like high tight haircut. He's looking at me and his eyes are huge.

And he says, "Water landing? Man, I can't swim."

There's a scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they have to jump off a cliff into a river to escape a posse and Robert Redford doesn't want to. And Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy says, "What's your problem?"

Robert Redford says, "I can't swim."

And Paul Newman says, "Swim? Are you kidding? The fall's gonna kill you." And this is exactly what pops into my head when this kid says, "I can't swim."

But I do not say it out loud to this terrified 19‑year‑old because I am not a monster. Instead, I just sort of ask him questions about who he is and where he's from, why he's going to St. Louis, these kinds of things, trying to distract him from the impending catastrophe.

Then Cecily comes back on and she says, “The pilot's gonna make an announcement.”

Then the pilot's on. And, you know, pilots always sound like they are just pure confidence, like embodied— they've never been turned down for a date in their lives. Not anymore, because this pilot comes on and he's like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are, um, uh… we're gonna, uh… we've been cleared to, uh, try and make it to the, uh, Pittsburgh Airport and we are gonna try," he keeps saying the word ‘try’, "we're gonna try to, uh, to do that and, uh, it is nine minutes away. So, now, Cecily's gonna take you through the Emergency Landing Protocol.”

Cecily's back. “The Emergency Landing Protocol is this.” Cecily and the other flight attendants, they're going to say, “Bend and brace. Bend and brace,” when the time comes. And your job, our job, everyone on the plane, our job is to get the top of our body as close to our knees as possible, grab our knees and hope for the best. That's the Emergency Landing Protocol. That's it.

So, Cecily signs off and now we have nine minutes. There's a thin layer of thin smoke in the cabin. It is very quiet. You can hear some people sobbing. You can hear some people hyperventilating, but no one is saying anything, and now it is nine minutes.

It is time to take stock. It is time to do an inventory, because seeing how these people are reacting, seeing how this veteran flight crew has reacted to what's happening, I do a little back‑of‑the‑matchbook math in my head and I figure, “Okay, based on just this, I think it's about 80%, this is it, so time to take some stock.”

And top of the list, my wife, who's back home in New York. But here's the thing with my wife. I am not a nervous traveler, but I do this thing. Whenever I travel without my wife, I do this thing for like the four days leading up to the trip, where I follow her around the apartment going, “I love you. You mean so much to me. You're the most important thing in my life. You've changed my life completely. You're just everything to me.”

She sort of endures this onslaught because she knows that when I was a kid, my father, a long‑haul trucker, died on the job out of state, and I grew up on my mother's stories how hard that was. And so now, whenever we -travel separately, she just kind of lets me do this.

But now that it looks like this might happen, it's actually pretty reassuring, because I know she's going to be hurt. I know she's going to be sad, but I actually have done it. I've told her all the stuff and that is actually very comforting.

Okay. Number two on the list, how do you judge a life lived? Like, am I happy with what I've done? The best formula I come up for with this is I've been in a lot of weird places and did a bunch of weird stuff. For a kid from Missouri, that's pretty good, actually. That's about as good as it's going to get. I can accept that. I can live with that, or not. However that turns out, I'm satisfied with that. It's okay. Fine.

Three, what happens after this? If this is it, what comes next? This is the part where I have to disappoint my mother, who is evangelical, has been waiting many, many decades for something to happen that will bring me back to the loving arms of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Apparently, that's not going to happen, because it didn't happen then. Not even a thought.

In the years since I left the church, I've come up with my own sort of ideas and notions about the structure and nature of existence. I do not know if they are right. I do not discuss them with anyone. One of the reasons I left the church, so I'd never have to discuss them with anyone. But I find this moment they actually are providing me comfort. I don't know if they're right, but they're good enough for this moment, and that's all I need them to be.

So, okay. That's all the big items. And then Cecily's back.

Cecily says, "Bend and brace. Bend and brace.” We all bend forward, we all grab our knees, and now we are going down.

As we are descending, I am waiting to feel that lift. You know that lift when you're getting close to the ground and you can feel the air kind of catch the wings and pull you up right before the plane lands and hits an actual runway. I'm waiting to feel that lift and hoping that's what I feel and hoping that if it's not going to be that then it's nothing. If it's just going to be a nose dive and then blood and fire and explosions then it'll just be quick and I will feel nothing and know nothing and it'll be over, and that's all I can hope for.

Then as the plane begins to get closer to the ground, I feel it. I feel that lift and then I hear the squelch of the tires. And then we are down in an actual runway and the plane is slowing to a stop.

Then the pilot comes on and he goes, “Welcome to Pittsburgh!”

We all lean up and we are laughing and cheering. It is amazing that we are alive. Then we pull into the terminal and then we all get off the plane and immediately go to a bar and get very drunk. It was a TGI Fridays. We didn't care.

Then I had to get back on a plane, because now they got us a new plane. We had to go. There's no time to develop a phobia. You just got to get back in there, and so we do.

Then three days later after that, I've got to return to New York. And then three weeks past that, I am mad at everything.

I am standing in the living room and, at this point, I am mad at the printer because it's not doing anything I want a printer to do. I am just cursing at the printer. It's right next to a window and I'm thinking about just grabbing it and chucking it out that window onto the sidewalk.

My wife comes in and she's like, “What is going on with you?”

I'm like, “I don't know. I'm mad at everything and I don't know why.”

And she says, “Do you think this is some kind of like PTSD from the near plane‑crash?”

I know less about psychology than I do about airplanes. And my wife and I, neither of us, we don't go in for self‑diagnoses. If things like PTSD and those kinds of things, if you're going to regard those things as legitimate medical phenomena, then they should be diagnosed by legitimate medical professionals. I am not qualified to do that, neither is anyone on the internet. I'm not going to go in for that kind of thing.

But I know that my wife, when she says this, I know that she means this in the colloquial way that we've all learned to abuse these terms, which is a shorthand for, "Hey, buddy, not dealing with something?" And that takes some consideration and I think about that.

I finally say to her, "Here's the thing. When I thought I was going to die, I thought I handled that well. I was very proud of how I handled that. I was unafraid. I accepted it. I was okay with it and I was proud of that. But now, it is three weeks later, and I feel like I handled my potential death so much better than I am handling my actual life.”

And she said, "Well, of course you are."

I said, "What?"

And she said, "Yeah. Death, dying is easy. It's something you do once. Living, you have to do every single day."

Thank you.

Part 2

When I woke up, the bear was watching me. He was standing there about five feet away. He'd snuck up on me while I slept, this huge animal. And in the moonlight, I could see his fur glinting this beautiful cinnamon color as he breathed.

We stared at each other, my blue eyes, his depthless black ones. And in that moment, I recalled with absolute clarity that humans can be prey.

We stared a little longer. It must have only been seconds. And then the moment broke and the bear turned and ran. He goes thundering down the slope to the trees.

I get out of my tent and I go up the hill to where my co‑worker Wesley is sleeping peacefully. He's missed the whole thing. I shake him awake and I'm like, “Wesley, you will not believe what the hell just happened to me.”

I'm telling him the story and he goes, "How fucking cool, right?"

I'm like, "Yeah, it's amazing."

And then he goes, "Were you scared?"

I'm like, "Obviously."

Keven Griffen shares her story at Kitt Recital Hall in Flagstaff, AZ in September 2023. Photo by Joshua Biggs.

I was recalling, as I sat there, as I told that to him, that I was scared. I realized, even though they tell you sort of your first week in the Sierra Nevada that black bears don't mean you any harm, knowing that didn't really change it in that moment. Black bears don't really see you as food and if you offer them food, they're going to be interested. But, for the most part, they're not going to fight you unless something's really wrong, unless circumstances have changed and they've become dangerous.

That was my fourth summer in the Sierra Nevada. My job was as a biological science technician. I would hike into these beautiful alpine fens and wet meadows and I would survey the vegetation there, from the smallest moss to the tallest overhanging tree. We would backpack in for eight days at a time and we would look at everything, the groundwater, the hydrology.

It wasn't always easy, but I loved it. And the job was really an excuse for me to pursue my true passion, which was the place. This kingdom of gnarled pines and granite peaks and blue lakes that were so beautiful they made my dusty little desert‑born heart ache.

I saw wonders in the Sierra Nevada. I know that's corny, but it is absolutely true. One summer, I sat at the top of Half Dome and I watched the Perseid meteor showers swing by. These stars so close, it felt like I could touch them.

Another, I sat on the shores of a place called Lake South America and I watched a golden eagle fly by, his wings longer than I was tall.

And, sure, there were mosquitoes, lots of mosquitoes, and lightning and hunger, and sometimes Wesley, one of my best friends who I'd known for forever, we would get mad at each other. He'd eat the last piece of chocolate or he'd annoy me that day.

And I wrecked my knees and two relationships. To this day, I cannot eat instant oatmeal without wanting to throw up. Still, it was always worth it, no matter how scary, no matter how hard.

So, it's maybe unsurprising that about a month after the incident with the bear, Wes and I have hiked into a new ridgeline. We're about 200 miles to the south of where we'd seen the bear. We're in Sequoia National Park and we're up high, 13,000 feet. We're above treeline and that night we sit there and we make our ramen. We're chatting as the sun sets and the stars come out, and they unfold all around us, like this beautiful blanket, this tapestry. It feels like we're at the top of the world.

I think to myself how absolutely lucky and how absolutely grateful I am to be there, in this place that I love so much and this place that I would spend forever in, if I could.

I wake up the next morning and my throat is sore. My eyes are crusted shut and when I pry them open, I rub them on my sleeve, the sky is brown. The sun is coming up and it's this creepy bloodred color. Even though it's like 5:30 in the morning, I already have a headache and I know that this fire is different.

I climb out of my tent and Wes is already awake. He couldn't sleep through this one. He's shoving tent poles into his bag and he looks at me and he goes, "We need to get out of here."

And I say, "Definitely."

As we're putting our packs back on, he looks at me and he asks, "Are you scared?"

And I say, "Obviously."

Wes and I have an 18‑mile hike out to our car. We have a five‑hour drive around the southern tip of the Sierra to get back to park headquarters, where we start and end every trip and where all of our belongings are, all of our co‑workers. And that entire 18 miles, this day‑and‑a‑half of travel, I'm thinking about how scared I really am. Because the thing about fire in the Sierra is that it shouldn't be scary. It should be a part of the landscape, like the bear. It's this thing that really only becomes dangerous when circumstances have gone wrong. But in the Sierra, things have changed and things have gone wrong.

But in the Sierra, things have changed and things have gone wrong. These gentle fires that are supposed to help the sequoias open their cones and weed out the weak and weedy trees, they've become something terrifying. And I could see it as we drove into town, this plume of smoke rising out of Kern Canyon, twisting in the light.

By the time we got home, the fire had beaten us there. Flakes of ash are falling from the sky and the air quality index says that things are unhealthy beyond unhealthy. Our boss tells us that we should be ready to evacuate and Wes and I are. We pack our belongings into our matching beat‑up Subarus and, in whatever space is left, our boss starts handing us Tupperware totes full of herbarium specimens, because in case the park burns down, they want to make sure that these rare plant collections are safe.

We check the house, we click the lights off, and I stand on the porch looking up at these mountains that had been my favorite home. I realize I'm not really scared for me. I'm scared for the place. I'm scared for what happens after these massive fires.

We post this flyer on the door of the house as we lock it for the incoming firefighters to see that says the occupants of this residence evacuated on 9/16/2020, and we drive away.

It's been three years now since that fire and, these days, I don't swim in alpine lakes and I don't commune with black bears and I don't measure my time by how many months have passed since I was last in the Sierra. What I study now is what comes after.

I don't want this to be a story about despair or grief or the loss that I feel watching those mountains burn. I want this to be a story about what grows back, and that's why I'm here, so that I can wake up every day and try to make a tiny piece of this a little bit better.

Thank you.