We all know, from an early age, that we are going to die. But that abstract knowledge truly becomes our own only much later. Sometimes it comes as a gradually developing awareness, sometimes more suddenly.
It came late for me—during my fortieth year. I had known for some time of my father’s cancer, known indeed that it was incurable. So my sister’s late-night call, relating the doctor’s report that the end would come any time now, came as no surprise. Yet on returning to bed I was suddenly seized by blank terror; for perhaps ten minutes I trembled in abject fear. My father’s sentence had somehow become my own. At that moment theoretical knowledge became dread reality: as surely as my father, I was going to die.
