However, we have no control over the powerful and never-ending concept of time. Biologically, every human being on earth has X number years in their life. Ironically, we have been dying since the day we were born. We are born with approximately ten billion neurons, and cells die every day. So, in a sense we are dying each day. Each and every day of our lives we stand precariously at the edge of death. I could be involved in a fatal car accident while driving to work, school

So, we have anxiety about death because we have never been there, and as a consequence we have uncertainties about dying or what we should expect from the experience. This leads me to the difference between fear of death and death anxiety. Fear of death can be defined as the anxiety experienced in daily life caused by the anticipation of death. Death anxiety may be a result of one imagining a future of facing death. Sigmund Freud said that people have this unconscious awareness of dying, and are accepting of death. This may be through aging or experiencing circumstances that confront one with the idea of death. My grandmother reminds me of these circumstances secondary to her end-stage emphysemous disease. My fondest memories as a child were times at my grandparents.

When looking at the epidemiology of psychiatric co- morbidity in smokers, there is a considerable literature linking smoking with various forms of psychopathology. The early work in this field tended to focus on character pathology and aspects of negative affect, such as neuroticism, hopelessness, and general emotional distress, all of which were associated with smoking. Many early theorists speculated that the initiation of smoking was environmentally based but that the maintenance of smoking was more related to psychopathology. None of this work was particularly methodologically sound. [4]

It seems so obvious to me now. The best time in my life was my childhood. As a kid growing up, I had no worries at all. I performed my daily chores around my mom and dad’s house afterwards I played outside just like all the kids in my neighborhood. Weekends trips to my grandparents’ house were special. Grandparents develop a certain way to entertain the grandkids. They seem to treat you differently. Not by disciplinary means, although, they did not mind punishing me for bad behavior. My grandparents, allowed me to be more imaginative or creative. It’s most likely related to my mom and dad working late at night. The transition of my parents work requirements allowed me more time to stay with my grandmother. My grandmother was a stay at home wife which she and my grandfather enjoyed. My grandfather worked at the Air Force base as an airplane mechanic. He was an honest, loyal, and hard-working man, though he was quite and loving, he was not as entertaining as my grandmother. My grandmother has false teeth. She would take them out occasionally and talk in such in way that would have in laughing with tears. To help my mother with the expense of after care school care, my grandmother would pick me up after school. I stayed with her until my mom got off from work. My grandmother encouraged me to draw. She sincerely praised me for my art that I created. My mother would too, but at times she seemed so frantic most of time; worrying about preparing dinner I suppose. At my grandmothers’ house I felt more comfortable. We would battle back and forth playing board games: Monopoly, Easy Money, and Risk. We would also play a memory game called concentration. It’s a card game where all fifty-two cards are faced down. The objection is to pick a pair of cards the same kind. During games we would drink bottled Pepsi. I’d light my grandmothers’ cigarette then tell her I was winning this time. My grandmother has smoked all of my life, and is now nearing her death, almost at any day. She’s on supplemental oxygen and religiously requires bronchodilator medication. Upon exertion she’s breathless.

Some topics in this essay:
War II, Metaphorically I’ve, Epidemiological Catchment, Abraham Maslow, Sigmund Freud, Air Force, Pepsi I’d, , Money Risk, cigarette smoking, Humphrey Bogart, depression anxiety, chemical imbalance, death death anxiety, grandmothers’ house, smoking enjoyable, dying day, nondepressed respondents, depressed respondents, die day, grandmother grandmother,