What a wonderful expression. All your articles are good, but none has affected me like this one.

I guess I'm more in your wife's position (cancer and heart failure), but the lessons to be learned on this side are essentially the same as those you articulated. I can't declare myself a "mature" person, as you describe him/her. But I have watched myself grow in those areas during this time. It has made me a better person, which is the real gift from aging and medical trauma.

And I have things to be grateful for. The doctors told me I would be dead a couple years ago, but I am still here and mostly functional. Who knows why. But my goal has been to live my life in such a way that my family, and especially my wife, can be with me without always thinking about the end result.

I hope I don't sound presumptuous when I congratulate you for graduating from religion to God's country.