Walking along the American River I came upon a tiny cove. I sat on some boulders near where the cove and the river met. In front of me the main body of the river rushed by at thousands of gallons a minute.

It seems that the older I get, the more I understand the way mortality shapes our perception and our willingness to be fully in this world. It’s not something I used to think about directly too scary but now I often find myself reading the obituaries, musing on what I would want my own to say: What are the things that will sum up my life? What will stand out?

Until I turned forty-six, it was easy to imagine that growing old was something that happened to others, that death was a long way off. While I hope death is a long way off, I’m coming to accept that it will happen to me, that none of us no matter how healthy or fit will escape it and that, much as we might wish, we won’t be able to choose our departure.

On sabbatical in East Africa, I heard a story of a people who believe that we are each created with our own song. Their tradition as a community is to honor that song by singing it as a welcome when a child is born, as a comfort when the child is ill, in celebration when the child marries, and in affirmation and love when death comes.

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,I felt the life sliding out of me,a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.I was seven, I lay in the car…