How Close Does Death Have to Get to a Man Before You Feel His Breath?
How close does death have to get to a man before you feel his breath?
It is a question that has lived quietly inside me for a long time.
It is days like today I am honestly wrestling with this question.
Not because I have found an easy answer.
But because I have met too many people who have carried that question without ever saying it out loud.
Some battles never announce themselves.
Some suffering learns to smile.
Some pain becomes so practiced at hiding that even the people standing closest never notice it.
Death has always fascinated humanity.
Not simply because He is inevitable.
But because, for some people, He does not arrive only at the end of life.
Sometimes He begins walking beside them long before that.
Not as a friend.
Never as a friend.
But as a shadow that slowly convinces a weary soul that it has always been there.
He keeps pace with ordinary life.
He stands quietly beside you while you make your morning coffee.
He follows you through the supermarket while nobody notices the war taking place behind your eyes.
He sits silently beside you in the driver's seat as you head to work.
He watches while you laugh with friends.
He waits patiently while you answer emails.
He says nothing.
He simply remains.
That is what makes despair so frightening.
He rarely announces itself with drama.
He often disguises itself as ordinary life.
I think that surprises people.
We imagine someone standing on the edge of a cliff.
We imagine obvious distress.
Visible collapse.
Uncontrollable emotion.
Sometimes that happens.
Often it doesn't.
Often the deepest suffering wears a name badge.
Turns up for work.
Pays the electricity bill.
Mows the lawn.
Smiles politely.
Asks how everyone else is doing.
Laughs at the dinner table surrounded by family and friends.
Then goes home carrying a weight nobody else can see.
I think one of the greatest misconceptions about suicide is believing it begins with a desire for death.
I don't think that is usually true.
It certainly hasn't been the case for me.
I think many people are not searching for death at all.
They are searching for the end of unbearable pain.
Those are not the same thing.
Pain has a remarkable ability to shrink the future.
It convinces you tomorrow will simply be today repeated.
It tells you healing belongs to other people.
It whispers that everyone else will eventually become tired of carrying you.
It slowly edits your imagination until hope becomes difficult to picture.
That is one of pain's greatest lies.
It narrows the horizon.
I know something about living inside difficult seasons.
There have been chapters where life felt impossibly heavy.
Chapters where illness changed everything.
Chapters where trauma rewrote the landscape of my mind.
Chapters where addiction promised relief while quietly demanding everything in return.
Chapters where loneliness became so familiar it almost felt like furniture inside the house.
I know what it feels like to wake up exhausted before the day has even begun.
To carry memories that refuse to remain in the past.
To wrestle with questions that have no easy answers.
Even today I have preformed a post mortem on my life,
Today Deaths intimate invitation feels like a warm blanket to my soul.
Even as i write this today I have wrestled all day with the thoughts to finish my last chapter on the last book of my life.
I also know something else.
Pain is persuasive.
Not truthful.
Persuasive.
There is a difference.
Pain tells convincing stories.
It gathers evidence.
It builds arguments.
It reminds you of every disappointment.
Every failure.
Every relationship that ended.
Every prayer that seemed unanswered.
Every opportunity that slipped away.
Every regret.
Every wound.
Every moment you wish had unfolded differently.
Then it quietly reaches a conclusion.
"This is who you are."
Except it isn't.
Pain is describing your wounds.
Not your worth.
Some of the strongest people I have ever met have quietly carried thoughts they never imagined telling another human being.
Not because they lacked faith.
Not because they lacked courage.
Not because they wanted attention.
Because suffering isolates.
It convinces us that nobody else could possibly understand.
Shame always speaks in isolation.
It says...
"Keep this to yourself."
"Nobody needs to know."
"They already have enough to deal with."
"They'll think differently about you."
So we become experts at performing wellness.
We become fluent in saying, "I'm fine."
We become remarkably skilled at keeping conversations on the surface while entire oceans rage beneath us.
I sometimes wonder how many people we pass every day carrying invisible battles.
The young mother buying groceries.
The elderly man eating lunch alone.
The nurse finishing another shift.
The teenager laughing with friends.
The businessman ordering coffee.
The university student catching the train home.
Every face carries a story.
Every heart carries weight.
Every person is fighting something.
Some battles simply happen where nobody else can see them.
Working in a hospital has only deepened that conviction.
Hospitals reveal how fragile we really are.
Not just physically.
Emotionally.
Spiritually.
Relationally.
A diagnosis changes conversations.
A phone call changes priorities.
One unexpected moment reminds us that control was always far more fragile than we imagined.
Yet hospitals have also shown me something beautiful.
People stay.
Families gather.
Hands are held.
Conversations become honest.
Love suddenly says things it should have said years earlier.
Sometimes suffering strips away everything except what actually matters.
I wish we did not need suffering to remind us of that.
The strange thing about despair is that it often convinces us our absence would be easier for everyone else than our presence.
That is one of its cruellest lies.
Because every human life leaves fingerprints.
We underestimate the spaces we occupy in other people's worlds.
The neighbour who smiles when they see us.
The colleague encouraged by our kindness.
The child watching more closely than we realise.
The friend who simply feels safer because we exist.
We rarely see our own significance clearly.
Not because it isn't there.
Because we are standing too close to recognise it.
I have often thought about Elijah.
One of the greatest prophets in Scripture.
He stood before kings.
Called down fire from heaven.
Witnessed extraordinary miracles.
Yet there came a day when he sat beneath a tree and asked God to let him die.
The remarkable thing is not that Elijah reached such despair.
The remarkable thing is how God responded.
He did not begin with a lecture.
He provided rest.
Food.
Water.
Presence.
Then, when Elijah was ready, He spoke.
There is something profoundly gentle about that.
God met the man before He corrected the thinking.
I think we could learn from that.
Sometimes people do not first need explanations.
Sometimes they need someone willing to remain beside them.
To listen.
To stay.
To remind them they are not carrying the weight alone.
Jesus consistently moved toward people everyone else avoided.
The forgotten.
The ashamed.
The grieving.
The possessed.
The sick.
The isolated.
He never seemed intimidated by brokenness.
He walked directly toward it.
Perhaps because love always moves toward suffering rather than away from it.
That thought has become increasingly precious to me.
Because there have been seasons where I could not imagine why God would continue walking beside someone like me.
Yet He did.
Not because I had everything together.
Because His character is not determined by my condition.
I think we sometimes imagine God waiting at the finish line.
The Bible presents something entirely different.
A God who walks the road with us.
Who enters valleys.
Who sits beside hospital beds.
Who hears prayers whispered through tears.
Who remains present even when His presence feels impossible to recognise.
That has changed everything for me.
Not because life suddenly became easy.
It didn't.
Not because every question received an answer.
It hasn't.
But because I slowly realised I was never carrying those questions alone.
There is a sentence Jesus spoke that has become increasingly meaningful the older I become.
"I am with you always."
Not occasionally.
Not when we perform well.
Not when our faith feels strong.
Always.
Those words have carried more weight than I can explain.
Especially during seasons where I had little strength left of my own.
I think hope is often misunderstood.
People imagine hope as certainty.
I don't.
Hope is choosing to believe that today's pain does not possess tomorrow's ending.
Hope says this chapter is real.
But it is not the whole book.
That distinction matters.
Because some chapters are unimaginably dark.
Some seasons feel endless.
Some mornings require enormous courage simply to get out of bed.
Some days Death feels close and intimate.
Acknowledging that does not weaken faith.
It tells the truth.
And truth has always been where God seems most willing to meet us.
Perhaps that is why the Psalms have remained so meaningful across thousands of years.
David did not edit his emotions.
He brought them.
Fear.
Anger.
Confusion.
Grief.
Joy.
Praise.
Questions.
They all belonged in prayer.
Maybe ours do too.
I have become convinced that one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person is not advice.
It is presence.
To sit.
To listen.
To refuse to rush their healing.
To remind them that darkness tells lies.
To gently hold hope for them until they can begin holding it themselves.
That kind of love reflects something of Christ.
Not because it fixes everything.
Because it refuses to leave.
As I finish writing these thoughts, the evening has fully arrived.
After living with this unhinged thought all day that I would rather be an Australian statistic and memory.
Life continues moving.
Ordinary.
Unremarkable.
Beautiful.
And somewhere among those ordinary moments are people carrying burdens nobody else can see.
If you happen to be one of them, I simply want to leave you with this.
Your pain is real.
Your exhaustion is real.
Your questions are real.
But they are not the entirety of your story.
You are more than your darkest thought.
More than your worst day.
More than your deepest wound.
More than the voice that tells you nothing will ever change.
There is still a future you cannot yet see.
There are still conversations you have not had.
People you have not encouraged.
Prayers you have not witnessed answered.
Mercies you have not yet discovered.
There is still beauty waiting beyond chapters that presently feel impossible.
I believe that with all my heart.
Because I have lived long enough to discover that some of the chapters I was certain would destroy me became the very places where I encountered the faithfulness of God most clearly.
Not immediately.
Not dramatically.
But quietly.
Patiently.
One day at a time.
Death has stood closer to humanity than any of us would ever wish.
He has stolen people we loved.
He has visited hospital rooms.
He has cast long shadows across countless lives.
But He does not get the final word.
Not because we are strong enough to silence it.
Because Christ has already spoken a greater one.
And His voice still calls people toward life.
One weary soul at a time.
About the Author
Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 3.9 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.
- Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
- Explore the Journey: Follow Dylan on Google Maps
- Connect on Instagram: @porkysparadise
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