I am afraid of losing what I have already valued.
I am not afraid of death, which after all can't be far away. What does frighten me, though, is the halfway stage.
Things don't matter, people do
Some things I can never forget. I must not. Otherwise what do I have left?
Death, when it's right there it doesn't seem too huge and terrible to let into your mind.
After a lifetime's independence– yes, selfish independence as my daughter would rightly claim – I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals.