March 5, 2024 - 14:17
"Too Late to Die Young" by Harriet McBryde Johnson reveals the profound sadness and morbidity that permeated the her life from childhood due to a healthcare system that failed her. Johnson's contemplation of her own mortality stems from the perceptions and attitudes towards disability, framing her existence as unsustainable. Her life shows the consequences of a world that consistently devalued and stigmatized disabled lives. Each milestone in Johnson's life becomes a poignant reminder of the societal expectation that her worth would be only fully realized in death. It is so tragic that someone must live a life from being a child, thikning death is around the corner, and seeing every milestone as honorable after death but not in the living moments. This weight carried through most of her life and impacted her perception, it must have been so freeing for Johnson to finally live without this looming cloud of death in her life.