tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

"Never forget that you must die; that death will come sooner than you expect... God has written the letters of death upon your hands.  In the inside of your hands you will see the letters M.M.  It means Memento Mori - remember you must die."  

~J. Furniss, Tracts for Spiritual Reading

    I believe it is probably unhealthy to always live one's life that way, to never forget that one must die. But the converse is also true, and perhaps more damaging overall, and in the short run to be sure. I must die. (I know not when, or how, or how reconciled....) But, knowing and attempting to be reconciled with that, I can make choices today, for today and tomorrow.
     The concept of Memento Mori has risen in the last four books that I've read. Four. Doesn't that seem strange? And I'm not reading about "death" per se. Nor am I reading books that have the slightest to do with each other. Two fiction, two nonfiction, on completely unrelated subjects. And Memento Mori.

[title quotation by Mary Oliver, from "The Summer Day"]