Recently on Rt. 1, I saw a box truck for a funeral home, probably carrying caskets. Their slogan was something about honoring your loved ones. It was nice. Shortly after that, I saw a van with a sign advertising their accessibility products–stair lifts and things of that sort.

Like finding a penny or seeing a cardinal, I see these as little signs from God. I’ve mentioned my preoccupation with death. While it may sound morbid, I find it to be actually life affirming. I could never explain the how or why of it, until I came across a guy who founded a winery.

I was at a party when I met him. He seemed young to have taken on such a big challenge, so I asked him how it all began. There were three friends who decided to open the winery, and one of them had gone through a very tumultuous battle with cancer while in college. They named the winery, Memento Mori. He said it means, “Remember to live.”

Remember to live.

Why did these three simple words hit me right between the eyes? I have a recurring nightmare in the spring that I have final in a class I forgot I had registered for, and I panic. Remember to live reminded me of that same feeling. At the very end of my days, will I be able to say I had lived and not merely existed?

The literal Latin translation of Memento Mori is, “Never forget you must die.” I imagine the one partner’s knowledge of his possible impending death provided a clarity most of us couldn’t comprehend.  Do we need a crisis like that to help us engage more fully with life?

Decades and decades ago, I played the role of Emily in “Our Town.” There wasn’t a rehearsal or performance that I didn’t choke up when saying Emily’s most famous line. In the play, she has died in childbirth and is sitting in one of the chairs onstage, along with other members of the town who have died, when she asks, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

Why is this realizing life and remembering to live so emotionally provocative but often so forgotten at the bottom of to-do lists? December, one of the most holy months of the year is also the busiest. It’s so easy to focus on gifts, baking and cards. It’s so difficult to really soak up the presence of our loved ones as our greatest gifts – always knowing there may be a year with an empty chair at the table.

How do we ensure we appreciate and value our family and friends while they are here? How do we truly appreciate our own lives while we are here?

Glennon Doyle wrote about there being two different times – Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is our 8a.m. meeting, 3p.m. school pickup, dentist appointment on Wednesday and all the other commitments that fill our days. Kairos is God time. It is time outside of time. It’s the feeling you get when you look at a brilliant night sky or a baby smiling. It’s the sound of our loved ones breathing in their sleep, the smell of earth after a heavy rain and patterns the ocean waves make in the sand. Time stops; there is just this moment, this realizing, this remembering.

I was recently introduced to the writings of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who lived from 1914-1943. Below is a section of her diary written shortly before being taken to the Westerbork transit camp:

“Something has crystallized. I have looked our destruction, our miserable end which has already begun in so many small ways in our daily life, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love has not been diminished…I have come to terms with life…By “coming to terms with life” I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich [life].”

By admitting death into our life, we enlarge and enrich it. By remembering we must die, we can also remember to live. Chronos time fills our mind, but there does exist an invitation to participate in Kairos time too.

I wish for you the largest, most Kairos enriched, life realizing and appreciating 2024. May you have moments every day that take you out of time and fill you with awe, wonder and amazement. Accept the invitation. Remember to live.

P.S. This picture makes me laugh, because Dale is on a ladder, but you can’t see the ladder, so he looks like a giant:)