First, dear Michelle, do not read that book. Despite its serious frame as a set of interviews with a beloved dying professor, it is reductive and a "feel good" read. (The author followed it with The Five People You'll Meet in Heaven or something like that.) That's why it sold millions of copies. If it had explored despair and a real reckoning with the darkness of death, Oprah wouldn't have repped it. It was the gift of a relative and I read it out of obligation. It wasn't a bad read--it is a "feel good" book--but I would never recommend it.

My mother's mother died at the age of 103 this past February, her faculties fully intact. She was an amazing woman in every way, and she rarely complained even though she knew pain and grief in spades. She just got on with it, but towards the end, the sheer strain of "just getting on with it" grew more and more exhausting, and you could see it. I loved and admired her tremendously, and at the same time, I don't know that I could have lived her life and don't know that I want to.

But that's your point, I think. Just getting on with it means taking what comes as it comes. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble, as the Good Book says, and that's all we're responsible for.

Take care, my friend, and enjoy those vegetables!