ABSTRACT
Watching my father’s mother Rachel die as a child, seeing her there one moment and then gone forever provided me with an early understanding that death could take us unawares. Then there was my mother constantly telling us that “life was not promised”—her admonition that challenged us to move from idleness to action, from indifference to passionate engagement. It has been part of my destiny to contemplate the meaning of death. In my spiritual practice I often focus on meditations meant to strengthen our awareness of death’s constant presence, to help us live fully in the moment that we have, the living moment—the present. Ram Dass uses a simple phrase to call us back to the living moment: “Be Here Now.”
