James Sexton

But spiders you could kind of stay away from if you wanted to.

But I was the opposite, I was weird.

I was like, okay, I'm afraid of spiders.

I'm gonna get a tarantula and I'm gonna put it in a glass tank right next to my bed.

So the first thing that happens every morning when I wake up is I have to look at a giant spider.

And it worked, I'm not as afraid of spiders anymore.

Like if I see a house spider now, it like crawls in my hand and I put it on a plant or whatever.

I wanted to do the same thing with death.

I was like, I'm just going to be around this.

I want to be around this.

I want to not be afraid of it.

And I started doing it.

I found it very life affirming to the point where then I did what's called vigil volunteering, which is when people don't have family and they're in like a nursing home or a facility and they're imminently dying, meaning they're like unconscious.

Because, you know, we have this insane, because we don't spend any time with people that are dying.

We have this bizarre Hollywood version of death where it's like, I loved you all.

And then we like fall, you know, or like, we just like fall asleep.

And death does not look like that.

Like people, you know, like it's, and when you talk to people who have a dying family member on hospice, like they're like, oh, it's not that they died.

They died without dignity.

And it's like, oh, he died the way people die.