I remember that day. I had just turned ten and was walking down the street close to my home when I realized that my age would be two digits from now on. The result of that insight was asking myself, would it ever be three digits?

Thinking about that then made me think about death. I realized it was unlikely that I would ever reach a hundred. The implication of dying swelled up in my mind. I wonder what my life would be like if I didn’t know that I would die. I felt that something had been stolen from me. 

As I reach the end of my 70s, I have become more aware of my mortality. Death itself is something I find almost incomprehensible. I don’t mean the death of others, which I observe more and more, but my death. How is it possible to imagine yourself not existing? Dying is something far more understandable because you’re alive while you’re doing it. Death is beyond comprehension. 

After our death, we leave behind for others memories of our lives, but our memories no longer exist, no past, present, or future. We have joined the beginning and the end of existence and perhaps the experience of awareness of all the possibilities.