His empty seat struck me hard. It would be that day that I would, for the first time, truly think about death and the afterlife. As I stared into the seat that would never again be filled by him, new thoughts flooded my brain as my tears flooded my face.

Death was now real. As real as the the empty seat that had brought it and the fear that had come with it.

It wasn't long before I thought about my own death, inevitable and unpredictable.

What if I was to die on my way home? What would happen? Would I watch the world from a fluffy cloud in the sky, invisible to all, if I was even allowed into a such a place? And if not, would I slave away in a world of fire and brimstone? Perhaps I'd continue to live a fake "life" unaware that I was no longer flesh and bones but an ethereal ghost. Or maybe I would be aware and haunt those that I had left behind? Would I be reborn into a cat or a new person to live a new life, with no memory of ever being Stephanie? Or, in my opinion the worst of all, would I simply cease to exist?

That thought...The thought of no longer existing horrified me and it only added in my tears. Out of all my fears, some trivial, some justified and some nonsense, the thought of dying and becoming nothing was the most petrifying of all. I couldn't stand it. I still can't and when the thought of my own death and my non existence enters my mind I can feel every molecule of my being shiver and cry to my brain to remove the horrible images: my empty seat in drama, the absence of my laughter around my friends, and the emptiness of the space that I am occupying right now and might not tomorrow.

What if I were to die today? What did 17 years of life accomplish? What was the purpose, the meaning of my life? To simply die at such a young age as Michael Clarke did?