Ten days ago a friend died unexpectedly. He was approximately my age, a lean runner, and incidentally an extremely distinguished man. He wasn’t a really a close friend, but we did from time to time sing songs together, me playing guitar fairly badly, him singing fairly badly. It was a kind of intimacy, the sort a 60yr old English man might venture.
A group of his friends met that night and watched the sun go down over the Atlantic. It was a clear sunset, and we caught a very small green flash.
Two nights ago, early in the morning I woke up from a very vivid dream. We were singing together, with me as usual struggling to get the rhythm right. This is what he was singing:
‘Where do I begin?
Time has run its tide,
And I knew it was not enough.’
It seemed like a real memory, carrying its own tune. It seemed like a message.
Yesterday, I had what I think was the first panic attack of my life, crouched on the kitchen floor, breathing damned hard and wondering ‘what is this?’
I’m not consciously mourning, I’m not consciously suddenly aware of my own mortality. But I am curious about that dream, about that song.
I'm a contemporary. I'm very aware of my mortality and, crucially,I know I have not done enough in this life. The tide is ebbing for us, but of course the way to consume an elephant is in small, daily, digestible chunks. If you leave it half eaten, it's still a meal for your successor.