“What was life like, I wonder, when you needed no “invitations” to think about death, had no reasonable way to calculate your probable lifespan, when mortality could announce itself at any time, not by an app, but by a ruptured placenta during childbirth, the infection from a small cut celebrating a victory over your bloodstream, a grass fire blazing out of control in your village, tuberculosis cozying up to your lungs?

As youth recedes farther and farther behind me, perhaps I’m getting closer to this more natural way of living. I still seek comfort in statistics, but there is always a part of me that knows—whether waking or dreaming—that death now walks in the same spaces I do, brushing against the hem of my skirt or touching the clothing of someone I love. I would no longer be shocked to find death standing stock still in the middle of my path. It could assert its presence at any time, in a swift stroke, as a sudden embolism, at the next doctor’s appointment.

In the meantime: breathe in that fragrance of a child’s hair. Open your pores to the morning breeze. Study the slope of your beloved’s cheek. All of this may soon be gone.”