The Faces of My Loved Ones

The days are just flashing by but feel more precious than ever.

Here's an appropriate quote from Annie Dillard:

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you were going to die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

My own reality in view of death is to think of the faces of my loved ones rather than to say or to write anything. Such faces, such souls. I thank God that I was allowed to know them, and to see them even now in my mind's eyes.

I see that much has been written on the subject, the latest of which I am aware being What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying, by Karen M. Wyatt, a medical doctor who worked in hospices. She structures the book around the “seven last words” of Christ, that is, the seven sentences Christ spoke from the cross. 

The “seven last words” are in fact excellent for the occasion, but the faces, the reality, of my loved ones move me beyond words.