“The other night I was lying in bed, in that half-waking, half-dreaming state familiar to all. I imagined my death, and realized that I would not see you and Alex and Ellen again. The feeling was powerful and very sad. Now I have this thought. Without death would we understand love, real love? Could we love? The connection may not be apparent, but it may be implicit in that saying from the Book of Common Prayer: “In the midst of life we are in death.”
An email from my dad, who very seldom writes this sort of thing to me; that he is sixty-six years old concretizes this observation in a manner I find terrifying.
