Carolyn Kost

“Most of all, though, I think about how I hope people will remember me, which I’d like to be with a big smile on their face. The way I try to conceptualise it for others is by getting them to try to think of me as a book they are glad they’ve read. All our lives can be thought of as books: for some we are just a paragraph or a footnote, and for others we are a chapter or a volume. But we’re not someone’s whole book, even our spouse’s or our parents’ or our children’s. We are characters in their stories. And they will keep writing beautiful chapters in their own books after we have gone. Just because someone dies before you, it doesn’t change the joy (and pain and exasperation and everything else) that their segment of your book has brought you. Dwell on the quality, not the quantity, and don’t fixate for too long on the fact that it ended, just like you don’t dwell for too long on the fact you’ve finished reading or watching something you loved. Just be glad you had them, and that they will be with you forever as a part of your own story.”

"An individual human existence should be like a river – small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and – in the end – without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man or woman who, in old age, can see his or her life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things they care for will continue."