and just diagnosed with COPD. You never know when everything changes. I keep reminding myself that. He’s had a long life, a beautiful life, and still, when you reach the end, there’s a sense of “But how could the world go on without me?”

Yesterday, when I talked to him, he said, “Your mother is my queen. She has always been my queen.” Forty-five years of a love like that. Wow. And so, as always, it gets down to what Thomas Merton said: This day will never come again. I remind myself of that every morning. If I live as if I know this day will never come again, it changes everything. What about for you?