Another person I love has died. I've developed a horrible fear of death. | Opinion
I've not seen a therapist for a few years, but I recently made an appointment in the hope that I can navigate my way out of the emotional quicksand. I'm making other changes, too.
It’s happened again. Another person I love has died.
When I joined the Department of Justice, as the decade rolled into 1990, I was the youngest federal prosecutor in the Detroit office of more than a hundred attorneys ... and I had a secret. It didn’t take long for the two FBI agents who were conducting my security clearance investigation to discover that I’m gay, and for the Justice Department to authorize my firing. I was fortunate; the U.S. attorney refused to fire me, and I went on to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney for 25 years.
Those first six months, as the FBI dug into what they referred to as my “alternative lifestyle,” were dark days for me. If I was discharged from my position because DOJ found me to be “unfit,” I feared I would never get another job as an attorney. The chaos of that time made me an emotional wreck. You could see it on my face and smell it in what I remember as half-a-year of endless perspiration.
For good reason, people stayed away from me – except for the most popular girl in the office, Amy Hartmann.
I’ve always recoiled from people who are followed by a personal ray of sunshine, have hummingbirds land on their shoulders and see the best in everyone around them. Amy was that girl, and for reasons I still do not fully understand, she let her sunlight shine on me. We became the best of friends – we had lunch together, worked investigations together and tried cases together.
Of course, I was always the bad cop and Amy the good. In the middle of an international drug conspiracy trial, one judge became so frustrated with my relentless effort to get him to reconsider his rulings that he refused to address me in court and directed all his communication to Amy.
After nine years of working together, Amy left DOJ and started her own estate planning law firm, in a little town outside of Detroit. A year later, I moved to the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office, where I worked for another 15 years. The distance changed the nature of our friendship, but never the love we had for one another. We’d often get together for a meal when I was back in Detroit. I’d text her occasionally to tease her about improving her diet of Cheez-Its and mayonnaise. And a few months ago, she called me during the raging L.A. wildfires and told me to “get the hell out of there.” Amy and I could go a year without talking, then one of us would call the other and we’d pick up exactly where we left off.
Last month, I got a call from a friend who is still with DOJ in Detroit. Amy, 64, had a massive stroke and was on life support. Six days later, she passed away.
I've developed a horrible fear of death
In the last handful of years, I’ve lost my biological father, my godfather and my younger brother, Lee. When Lee died in 2019, I promised myself that I was going to do a better job of living life and letting the small things go.
But my obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Donald Trump’s presidency, conspired to ensure my failure. I spent two years writing angry newspaper columns and tweeting outrage in place of living. Then, I emerged from a year of COVID-19 lockdown more irritable than ever.
Things have not improved.
I’m wallowing in a cesspool of daily disgust over my fellow Americans’ decision to jettison a constitutional democracy in exchange for Project 2025-styled fascism. I’m ruminating at my grocery store’s decision to replace checkout clerks with self-service machines. And don’t get me started on the cursing that comes with every visit to my parents, while I spend hours fiddling with the TV remote after my mother pushes a series of random buttons that locks it in a Vulcan death grip.
As I’ve cracked into my sixth decade of life, I’ve developed a horrible fear of death – less of my own than of the people I love. I’m sure a competent psychiatrist could follow a thread that would lead back to my childhood, my parents’ divorce and my fear of abandonment.
Navigating my way out of the emotional quicksand
I’ve never had a lot of people I’m close to, but the death of so many important people in my life in such a short time has left me terrified about the deaths of the few who remain.
My partner of 14 years calls me a “catastrophizer.” He’s right. The fear of what may happen tomorrow has stopped me from enjoying today.
I’ve not seen a therapist for a few years, but I recently made an appointment in the hope that I can navigate my way out of the emotional quicksand to which I appear drawn.
I’m making some concrete changes, too.
I quit my homeowners’ association, where I spent way too much time fighting with the old lady who runs the condo board and wants to renovate our building into a 1995 Holiday Inn. I finally bit the bullet and paid $5 a month to Pandora to spare myself the endlessly annoying laundry detergent commercials while my music plays. And I’ve concluded that if we can have dessert after lunch and dinner, there’s no reason to deny ourselves a piece of chocolate after breakfast.
Sometimes life trickles to an end. Sometimes it hits a wall, full speed. But rest assured, time runs out.
I’ve always cringed when people say, “Live everyday like it’s your last.” If I did that, the remainder of my days would be devoted to eating fried chicken wings while sitting on my sofa watching "The Real Housewives."
We can’t treat every day like it’s our last, but we can look for the pleasure in life and give ourselves permission to live it.
Michael J. Stern was a federal prosecutor for 25 years in Detroit and Los Angeles. Follow him on Bluesky: @michaeljstern.bsky.social