我们必须思考死亡。是的，是的，是的。

We must think about death. Yes, yes, yes. But I am also allowed to just think about death when I am dying, or to drug the thought away even then, or simply to pretend it’s not happening. My mother is eighty-five now and, though in excellent health, taking long walks and doing her yoga, may die any day. When she was my age, fifty-eight, I was thirty-one, and I remember very clearly that she was an old lady to me then, no younger or older than she appears to me now. …