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For Matilda Moss, death has always been a hard and difficult topic for her to deal with. The first time the concept of death was explained to her was when her Grandpa Victor (her paternal grandfather) died of lung cancer when she was four-years-old. Genevieve was only two while Nicholas was only 11. While Nicholas had a full understanding of death at the time, Matilda and Genevieve didn't.
"When a person dies, that means they are no longer with us. Grandpa Victor is gone forever," her mother explained.
During that incident, Penny and Nicholas traveled from Australia to Los Angeles to come help with the funeral arrangements. Darren had informed them about what happened right before he picked up his daughters from daycare. Although the children got along just fine, Darren and Penny were still not on good terms considering the ugly way their relationship ended.
At least the girls adored their older brother, so they were excited to see him despite the fact that they didn't see each other very often.
The girls (and Nicholas) seemed to forget about the death of their grandfather for a while when they played with Nicholas in the backyard. The siblings were admiring the bugs, bees, and butterflies that were surrounding them; Nicholas even having to stop Genevieve from kicking down an ant pile or even stepping on a roly-poly in half.
"Genevieve, we don't be mean to bugs like this," he lectured with a smile. "Spiders and bugs are our friends. We don't want them to die. They're living things just like us."
The toddler giggled in return, followed by an "otay", in which she meant "okay". Nicholas found the way his baby sister mispronounced words (like calling a bathing suit a "baby soup") to be cute, and Matilda found it funny. Nicholas and Matilda always had this urge to correct their little sister during mispronunciation, but their parents said that it would just make her more frustrated and that it wouldn't actually help her learn to pronounce it correctly.
"Give her time," they'd say.
After a while, Matilda finally decided to ask her brother about death.
"Nicky," she began. "Do you know what it is like to be dead?"
"I don't know," he replied, wondering how to explain it to a four-year-old, but also afraid to admit to her the whole truth because he wanted her to be able to sleep at night. "Do you know what death is?"
"Yes. Mommy said that it means you don't exist anymore, what does that mean?"
"It means that they don't come back to life, like ever," he shared with blunt honesty, something Matilda was also known to do.
Even after she was told that harsh fact, Matilda naively believed that something magical would reverse death, like the kiss of a handsome prince or something like that.
By the time her mother died, she already had a full understanding that death was a permanent thing that could not be reversed. She didn't deny the fact at all.
She will never forget the day that her mother died: November 13th, 2009.
She was only seven-years-old at the time while Genevieve was only five. It was a brain aneurysm that killed her quickly, and she and Genevieve were lucky they didn't get to watch it happen since they were both at school. In hindsight, it did kind of make sense because on the day that the incident had happened, their mother had woken up with a headache and asked their father to drop them off at school.
Then, at 1:00 in the afternoon while Ms. Stone was reading a Magic Tree House book to the whole 2nd grade class, one of the office administrators had walked into the classroom (along with a confused Genevieve) and then whispered into Ms. Stone's ear. Then, Ms. Stone's face shifted from a cheerful smile to a somber look towards Matilda. The office administrator then asked Matilda to come talk privately with her and Genevieve outside in the hall, and that is when they were informed that their mother died.
That was when Genevieve began to cry, but Matilda's eyes were still dry. She couldn't describe how she felt. Even after the funeral, Matilda did not cry once.
For a while, Matilda withdrew from everything and self-harmed by roughly pulling on her hair. That moment was also when she developed an unhealthy anxiety about death.
All the way up until she was nine, the thought of death and dying freaked her out big time, and it was mostly just the thought of not existing that scared the living crap out of her. Any mention of words like "death", "dying", "died", or "dead" would fuel her anxiety about it, leading her to start crying and have a meltdown.
This unhealthy anxiety consumed so much of her life that her father decided that she needed some therapy to help her get over it and get on with her life and just enjoy it.
Her therapist at the time asked her what she liked to do as a hobby, she said that she liked listening to classical music like Mozart and Beethoven (as opposed to the repetitive Top 40) as well as dance to it and twirl around.
That was when her therapist suggested that she sign up for classical ballet, and so her father did that for her and Genevieve. But when Matilda got a coloring book about favorite ballet stories, reading about ones that ended in a tragedy such as Gisele, Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet kind of fueled her death anxiety, especially when Ms. Lillian taught her about the infamous dying swan pose. Therefore, she decided to call quits and then moved on to just listening to classical music and was signed up for piano lessons instead. Genevieve continued until she was 13, except she quit because the pressure was too much for her (and it also would have eventually become too much for Matilda as well).
So, as she got older, she started to fear death a little less as she found something else to focus on, which was living her life at its fullest and living in the moment by making music. She focused on nothing but her dream of becoming a composer.
Since then, while still having an accurate understanding of death and its impacts, her anxiety over it was behind her and she was focused on nothing but living her best life and enjoying the present.
That is, until she was 17 and her father was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and he only had months left to live.
On the day that she and her siblings found out about his diagnosis and that he wasn't accepting any treatment, they all slept in the same room together. Just like when they were informed of their mother's death, Genevieve cried while Matilda didn't while they were out eating banana pudding.
Although Matilda peacefully slept through Night #1 of being aware of her father's diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, the next two nights were slightly much more difficult to sleep through because she felt like her eight-year-old self all over again - constantly afraid of death and dying.
As she lay awake in bed, she tried so hard to get her mind off of those horrible thoughts of being dead and set them aside for good, but it was hard to relax and simply picture herself performing at Lincoln Center or St. Bartholomew's Church, listen to Amy Beach, or even write music without her horrible thoughts bothering her and torturing her.
And it wasn't just disturbing thoughts that were clouding her mind, but also the physical discomfort like the sweating and the cramps in her abdomen and often feeling the need to make a bowel movement (those often correlated with anxiety). It was most likely associated with overwhelming anxiety.
No matter how superficial this probably sounded, she envied people who didn't have issues with anxiety.
Hoping that a midnight snack would temporarily help, she pulled herself out of bed and then walked straight into the kitchen for a sandwich, where she found her father drinking a beer and reading a book.
"Hey, Matilda. What are you doing up?" Darren asked, looking up from the book as he heard Matilda scrambling the fridge for food.
"I couldn't sleep," Matilda replied, taking a seat next to Darren at the table after she made herself an ALT (avocado, lettuce, and tomato) sandwich. The room was silent for a while until Matilda finally asked her father the question she had been meaning to ask. "Daddy, how do you cope with the fact that you're going to die. I'm sorry that it's probably an insensitive question, but I'm scared of dying right now and I need your advice as you are the only one I know right now who is facing death."
"It's actually okay that you're asking me this, because it's probably a very important thing to talk about," reassured Darren. "Do you want me to be blunt, sweetie?"
"Yes."
"Honestly, I hate to say this, but it's kind of scary, but…I'm trying to live out the rest of my days in peace by spending them with my children," he explained, reaching out to give Matilda a pat on the back. "However, I've also learned to fear death a lot less as I got older."
"How?"
"Experience mostly," assured Darren. "I've been on this planet for 53 years. I've seen loved ones die. As I got older, I started to realize that I just need to live like I was going to die tomorrow. But, I also feel like I kind of lived my life."
"So, what can I do?" Matilda begged. "How can I stop thinking scary thoughts about death?"
"Live in the present moment, enjoy your life, and don't worry about the future too much," suggested Darren. "Try breathing and meditating, those are helping me cope with my impending death."
"Okay, thanks for the talk. I love you. Goodnight," Matilda bid as she finished her ALT sandwich and went back to bed, but not really back to sleep into a wonderful dreamland slumber where she had dreams of butterflies and rainbows.
One month later, Darren died peacefully, dosed with soothing morphine while listening to a cheesy Phil Collins song, surrounded by his three children, including Matilda, which was a disturbing thing to watch for her.
She didn't want to be in the same room when her father died, but she didn't tell anyone about it; not even to Nicholas nor to Genevieve, or even Drea and Jeremy. As an autistic girl, she sometimes had trouble reading social cues, especially when she was younger, but she has adapted (although she wished that society would learn to accommodate her and others like herself). And she thought that her dying father was expecting her to be by his side at his death bed, so she decided to be there.
Yet somehow, she wished that she wasn't because watching him die only fueled her anxiety over death even more.
As of right now, it was one night after his death and two nights before the day of his funeral, and Matilda needed someone to talk to. She went to Genevieve's room only to see that she was already fast asleep.
So, she decided to talk to Nicholas, who was thankfully awake in the living room with the dog snuggled up next to him as they both stared at the jar of ladybugs.
"Nicholas," Matilda called out, her eyes full of tears.
"Matilda, what's wrong?" Nicholas asked, wiping a tear from his eye.
"I don't know, I know that maybe I shouldn't be making this about me right now, but…" Matilda began before pausing.
Nicholas knew that Matilda's mind wasn't wired the same way as his, Alex's, Genevieve's, his parents', or his stepmother's was, and he did do a lot of research on how to help autistic people deal with grief, learning that they might not do it the same way that neurotypicals expect them to.
This meant that she might not shed tears immediately as they may be delayed. It could also mean that she might not really want to talk about her feelings, so asking her how she was feeling was probably a no-no. She might just want to be left alone. She could shutdown, meltdown, or just simply not want to hang out with her friends, so he needed to be on the lookout for those.
"But what?" Nicholas's face turned to worry. "Is something bothering you?"
"Yes, something is bothering me! I'm afraid of dying," sobbed Matilda, stomping around in circles with her arms folded. "I don't understand! I got over this years ago! The process of dying and the idea of being dead…both! And also the thought of not existing."
It was true. The thought of being dead frightened Matilda because the truth was that she was never going to know the experience of being dead, because there was going to be no her to perceive it.
"Okay, okay…um…why don't you come and sit down next to me," he said, patting the empty side next to him, signaling that she could sit with him.
Matilda walked over to the couch and then snuggled up next to her brother and new guardian tightly.
"Would you like to just be held or do you want to talk?"
"Both."
"Okay," sighed Nicholas, wrapping his arm around Matilda. "I think maybe the reason why your anxiety over dying is being regurgitated is because you just watched Dad die."
Matilda nodded, knowing that he was probably correct about that. "I'm also afraid of when and how I'm going to die. Human nature generally seeks to control the situations they encounter, but death remains something over which people have absolutely no control over, which was petrifying to a lot of people. And I'm trying not to think about it, but it's hard not to. These thoughts are like annoying robo calls. Maybe I'm also fearful of death right now because I'm afraid of dying when I haven't been able to do the things I want to do with my life."
"Ah, I get that feeling," empathized Nicholas. "I want to marry a good man and maybe have a child and also travel the world. I have so many goals in life. However, I know that even once I accomplish all three of those, I'm going to have more. It turns out that never being satisfied is just a part of life. Also, I think another reason why your anxiety is resurfacing is because you're about to enter another chapter in your life, which is becoming an adult and going off to college."
Matilda thought that maybe Nicholas was right about that. She was almost 18 and was thinking about applying for Juilliard. For her, entering new transitions of life was often a stressful thing.
"You're entering the stage of your life where you learn that life is just a fucked up mess," he explained. "That's what my mom told me when I was around your age and I had some regurgitating anxiety about death."
"How did you manage it?" Matilda asked, desperate for answers on how to get over her invasive anxiety.
"I know it probably gets annoying when neurotypicals suggest this, and you've probably been asked this before…I know I have…but, would you try yoga and meditation? Breathing exercises can also help," Nicholas suggested. "I mean, finding a hobby does help, but I can see that making music already relaxes you. And if you need anti-anxiety medication, I can refer you to a psychiatrist."
"Maybe. I could try that and see," agreed Matilda. "But I'm not sure if I want to go on medication just yet."
"Okay. Anyway, my best advice is to just live in the present moment, enjoy your life, and don't worry about the future too much," advised Nicholas.
"I want to go back to my own bed and listen to music now," decided Matilda. "I think listening to music and imagining myself performing it at St. Bartholomew's church helps me relax."
"Alright, goodnight," laughed Nicholas, letting Matilda get up from the couch and then watch her about to disappear down the hall. "I'm taking you and Genevieve out for ice cream tomorrow after I make funeral arrangements. Would you like to come? Would that make you feel better?"
"I would love that," Matilda smiled back. "Goodnight."
And then, Matilda headed back to bed, and since that night, she started to slowly feel a little bit better and then slowly get over her anxiety all over again.