This is how I've managed to do it. With a kitchen timer. Thirty minutes writing cards to family and friends (last time I did that was...too long ago to remember.) Thirty minutes reading: Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill. Wonderfully readable and frank book reflecting on a well lived life now moving towards her aging, her old-age. Then thirty minutes writing cards...and so on.

I recommend the kitchen timer for discipline and the book for insight into old age and death. And also recommended is the effort to write those cards to family and friends.

Back in 1994 an immigration officer at the American Embassy gave me unsolicited advice as he granted me my visa. Don't visit your mother once, come back regularly. I hadn't thought about her death 'till then. She died a year later. That's thirteen years ago come Thursday. She'd have been one hundred this year, had she lived on.

Perhaps the cards are a recognition of age. Mine. Theirs. And our passing out of existence.