What Would You Do If You Knew…

What if you knew when you were going to die? What would you do differently?

At least two fairly recent novels address this question, using different setups. In Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment, a woman on an airplane goes up and down the aisle, telling people the time and cause of their death.

In The Measure by Nikki Erlick, people receive a package containing a string indicative of the length of life ahead.

I want to share with you a quote from a novel I just started entitled I See You’ve Called in Dead. The boss of the protagonist in the novel is telling him about a group of nuns who make a point in everything they do of remembering they are going to die.

“When they were asked if it was depressing, they said no. Quite the opposite. It makes life almost impossibly beautiful,” the boss said.
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A couple of days ago, the wind on the beach was quite strong. Looking out to sea, I observed a rainbow hued kite with a woman in tow, skimming across the water.

"Look at that!” I told my husband.

“There’s another one off to the left,” he said.

“And there’s a third.” I pointed to a smaller sail, not like the other two.

“That one’s a wind surf,” he said.

“What are the others?”

“The one on the left is a kite surf, and the other one’s probably a kite board.”

“What’s the difference?”

He explained, something about the size and shape of the board, as well as the kite or sail.

“That looks like so much fun!” I said. “Do you think I could do that?”

“I imagine myself falling down, being dragged across the water, and drowning,” he said. “I think wind surfing is harder to learn, but the others probably take a lot of strength.”

“Hmm,” I said. My appetite for adventure is greater than my skill or my strength, I fear.

I have a friend about ten years younger than I am who often brings up bucket lists. Although I know I’m not getting younger, I tend to procrastinate when it comes to thinking about bucket lists.

I had planned a trip to Japan in 2020 when the pandemic struck. Since then, when I bring up Japan, my husband says, “I’m not going to Japan, but you go ahead.”

His tolerance for adventure is less than mine. Still, for better or worse, we tend to do things together.

Every now and then, though, I need to take action or risk waiting until it’s too late. I’ve always wanted to try snow skiing. Surely, I could still handle a bunny slope.

Also, I’m planning a trip closer to home. My husband often says, “There’s a lot of the U.S. we haven’t seen.”

New England in autumn sounds appealing.
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We know we have no guarantees of our days on this earth. So, maybe, within the next year…