i'm so scared of death

tonight, my dad and i went to go see the movie changeling about a mother whose son is kidnapped and the corruption of the LAPD who returned her a nine-year-old boy who isn't her son and when she insists that it's not her son and begs them to keep looking, they shut her up in an insane asylum until one of the non-corrupt cops stumbles across a homicide involving a farm on which twenty little boys were hacked to death by a man named gordon. and there's this one part of the movie after gordon is convicted of the murders and has finished his two years of solitary confinement and it's time for hanging and he's walking down the stairs from his cell into the room with the gallows and i felt a pang with each shaky step down the stairs as if the steps were extensions of my heart. i don't even know how to describe the feeling. i could picture him running through his head everything he wouldn't ever do again, the grass he would never feel again, the rays of sunlight and the droplets of rain, the feeling of ice-cream dripping down his chin, the comfort of a bed beneath him and the snugness of down blankets on a cold night. i could feel the overwhelmingly trippy notion that right now i'm treading this ground, breaking in these shoes, wiggling my toes in these socks, still seeing faces and breathing the air of this world, but in a matter of minutes it's all going to stop. one second you're here and the next you're not. you can't even wrap your head around that other state--death. and then he had to climb the steps to the gallows and he's practically in hysterics and he's crying and holding on to the railing and the guards are marching him up the stairs and he's crying and crying "PLEASE, don't make me walk so fast!" and even though he's the bad guy, that moment my heart broke for him. "don't make me walk so fast.." his sobs filled my chest. death. it's so permanent. what's on the other side? hell? heaven? it's so easy to have faith about now. about things God is doing and going to do on earth. it's so easy to have the faith to start prayer meetings, to cry out to God, to intercede, to worship Him. here. but i'm so scared of death. it feels like a brick wall and i can't. i can't. i don't know. i'm scared. and then i was talking to my dad on the subway and maybe it was because he was telling me about schindler's list and life is beautiful, but looking into his eyes and seeing the wrinkles on his face, i felt so incredibly sad. i don't want him to die. i don't want to think about ever having to lose him. and what happens after inevitably i do? i feel like that guy walking up the stairs: don't make me walk so fast. because every step i take is one step closer to when i have to lose someone. and a little part of me is going to die. and another and another, until one day, i'll give up that last little piece. and then what?