Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThat life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. – Santayana

Life hurts. Crazy to suggest otherwise. The more we’ve loved it, the deeper the pain. The older we get, the more regrets. We miss friends, places, adventures, speed, strength. I miss the astonishment of hearing pieces of music for the first time (Grieg’s Holberg Suite, say). I can reread Shakespeare as if a newcomer, but never again in fact. I can’t fall in love with Jane because I’m already there.

How we cope with that hurt is up to us nowadays. I say “nowadays” because once upon a time, tribes imposed religions it was dangerous to vary from. Protestants had to be Protestants in Protestant countries, Catholics Catholics, Buddhists Buddhists, or watch your step! Freedom of thought that costs your life is overpriced.

Thinking freely you’re unlikely to arrive at superstitious reverence. Any creed’s implausible until you buy in. I have a God, but no creed except my own. And my own is unconvinced by any afterlife. Dead is dead, no second chances, no amends.

Many accommodate themselves to death by ignoring it. This works until it doesn’t. One day, waking to its inevitability, they may yelp, “Yikes! Extinction! No way!” Sincere deathbed conversions are reaching for flotsam not to drown.

I don’t mind gazing at death. The more I look, the more I see. Yes, it’s curtains, yes, life is meaningless, so now what?

Conclusion one: Make the most of what you have, don’t gripe about what you don’t. We’re all deprived – of time and chance – so what? We’ve got now, haven’t we? Make something nice – that delights you and may others. Let your eventual nonentity goad you into rewarding activity.

Conclusion two: Wrestle death, don’t run from it. Relax in its embrace. I love Messiah’s only duet, sometimes overlooked in the score’s hurtle to the Hallelujah chorus: “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?” Death is only hateful if you hate it.

Conclusion three: the invariable Golden Rule: treat your own death as you’d wish others to treat theirs. Any anticipated death is both a private privilege and public performance. Your loved ones will be watching, taking notes. A fearful whiney death like my dad’s is a fearsome bequest. Socrates aced his.

Conclusion four (the hardest): Savor your sadness. Pain is our most persuasive educator; let it teach you. Look on each day’s details as if they will disappear at nightfall. Think “goodbye”, not “see you soon”. Only then will you luxuriate in your luck. Too much of my life I treated with insufficient reverence – until too late.

I am getting ready to die. No diagnosis haunts me but the one we share. I used to think it ghoulish John Donne kept a coffin in his study for practice. No longer. I do the same, only without the visual aid (which would detract from our décor).

And I write. Shakespeare in Sonnet 77 presents the Youth he loves with a blank journal. “The vacant leaves,” he explains

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published thy mind's imprint will bear,And of this book this learning mayst thou taste...

Look, what thy memory can not containCommit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt findThose children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.

By writing my world, I right it – and rescue it from oblivion.

I was in a funk when I began this missive. I’m buoyant now.