Grave Expectations

The year is 1969, and I am a Senior at Hickory High School.  Our Honors English class is reading Dante's "Inferno" and I am apparently asking too many questions of the teacher because my friend, Tom,  continues sighing. Some exasperating sighs.  At one point, he just blurts out:  "SARA HILL!  YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH DEATH!"  This will become one of the defining moments of my life.  Thanks, Tom, for speaking your truth.  And for the inscription in my yearbook.  Forty-five years later, I am STILL obsessed with death.  After all, there is nothing which so intensifies life as the practice of remembering death.  Memento mori.  And here's to the hope that we all end up crossing the River Jordan and not the Styx!