at many points in history, people have thought they were experiencing some kind of disastrous social decline, when in fact, they were merely aging.

Most lives are lived with passivity toward death—it’s something that happens to you and those around you.

when we distance ourselves from death, we are also distancing ourselves from that which feeds life. We are distancing ourselves practically from the very nourishment that would replenish our spiritually anemic culture.

Winter had just set in and the dark came early and no one knew he had only a few months to live,

Dying-as-spiral, with no set moment of absolute death, is in some way true for all organisms—cellular death is a long process, with unknown holistic value to body and spirit.