This morning, Miklos told me that he had a very bad night. He thought he was dying, and was so pleased to wake up, find himself still alive, and know he would have more time with me and our family. I am relieved, too. I’m not yet ready for him to leave me. And he still finds so many enjoyable moments each day.

It’s possible that the experience of feeling that he was dying motivated him to take better care of his health. When I suggested that he get dressed and take a walk, he didn’t argue, and later he did dress without another reminder and took three laps around our little lakes.

It is this uncertainty that is the most difficult to deal with. Not knowing whether he will be more energetic and active the next day or die in his sleep. I suppose that in one sense, we all live with that uncertainty. People die in car accidents, or from Covid, or from aneurisms. But when we are younger and reasonably healthy, we don’t anticipate it in the same way we do as we age.

The Stoics taught that we should contemplate our mortality so that we live each day fully. Viktor Frankl said that it is only mortality that motivates us to do anything. If we could write our novel or plant our garden tomorrow, or next year, or in a thousand years, we would probably wait. Fine hypotheticals to ponder. But not very helpful in dealing with the day to day concern about what tomorrow will bring.

Miklos continues to have days when he is really alert and active, but often if I make a request about what I wish he wouldn’t do, he will say under his breath, “You won’t have to put it with it for very long.” Not very long might be a month or a year or ten years. It’s an extension of the grieving process.