Status Updates From Farewell, I'm Bound to Leav...

That was a great distinction between them. My grandmother had not the slightest fear of death and would speak of it with warm familiarity. But my mother couldn't abide the thought. Whenever a hint of death brushed her attention, she frowned and made an annoyed gesture with her left hand, as if someone in her presence had made a joke of dubious taste.

"Now it's a truth," my grandmother told me, "that life is difficult and man is condemned to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and we had all better take heed and store up for the hard times a-coming. I've never been one to say a body should spend the livelong day in frolic and foolish merriment. But there's a cast of mind that makes things cheerfuler.