We are now well past Ash Wednesday, more than half of the way until Easter and I’m pondering ashes. Not because I have any in my non-working fireplace. Not because my house itself has become ashes due to fires, as is true for many in California. Not because my house or town has been pulverized by bombs, as is true in the Ukraine, Gaza, and the West Bank. And not because the corners of rooms in my well-built house are hosting dust bunnies, which they are! Dust and ashes are an almost interchangeable in Hebrew and Christian scriptures—“You are dust, and to dust you shall return,” God tells Adam and Eve, and Abraham refers to himself as being “dust and ashes.” (Gen 18:27)

To speak of ourselves as being but dust and ashes speaks to our mortality and the fragile nature of life. That is what the past weeks have underscored for me. Two weeks ago, Wayne and I visited my 99-year-old aunt. She is doing remarkably well for her age although her sight is almost gone and she lives with shingles that have lasted for years. She has been fortunate to live in her own home so long, but now she and her 96-year-old husband were preparing to move to an apartment in a retirement complex. She has been unhappy about the move, reluctant to leave the familiarity and memories of their home of many years. As I sat with her, we talked about the relatively few belongings she will be able to take with her, by which to remember her long and productive life. And I began to think of all that I will give up when the time comes for me to move.

On the same trip, we visited a friend from Botswana days who is waiting for a room to open up for her. She has been actively sorting for months and her apartment looked spare, partly empty. I also visited a friend who recently moved to a retirement center and is feeling the relief of having downsized. She is now focused on how to organize a new life, away from the profession that gave meaning to the past decades.

As we began our trip home, I thought of all the changes that I will most likely have to face. Will I be able to face these diminishments with as much grace as my friends evidence? I hope so. However, the little fiction I hold on to, that aging is years down the road, was in the process of getting burst. I had learned a few days earlier that a good friend, who appeared to be the picture of health the week before, had had a heart attack. Just before leaving my aunt’s place, Wayne got an email about the death of a first cousin with whom he has worked on genealogical projects. He was old, so that wasn’t surprising, but then came the text telling me that the husband of my cousin, years younger than me, had had a stroke and was in the hospital. Mere days after we got home, I learned that my aunt, the mother of this same cousin, was in the hospital with complications from a fall that will, most likely, mean a move to a new level of care.

In the midst of all this, came March 24, an anniversary that my sisters and I will never forget. As one of them noted, it is “the day our world stopped and had to start over again,” the day our 26-year-old father died in a plane crash. It is also the day my life continued. Had I been awake when he left, I would have gone with him.

Is the Universe trying to get my attention—trying to remind me in this Lenten time of ashes—that I need to pause to face my mortality with more intentionality? What are my priorities at this stage of life? Are there things I hope to accomplish, and if so, how do I work on them today—not next week or next month? Time no longer stretches endlessly, year after year, beyond me. What might I need to let go of in order to make space for the really important? Are there things I may need to add—like discipline, maybe?

And even more importantly, how do I prepare for a time when I may be sick or without energy or mobility? What is the core or essence of my life that is important to nurture now? Who am I if or when I lose agency? How do I come to terms with and love a diminished self, a self that isn’t driven by doing and accomplishing?

These are questions that will ultimately get resolved by the living of them. They are questions to ask when I get up in the morning and at turning points of the day. I will ponder them before I go to sleep at night. They will be answered one day at a time, calling for awareness as the minutes and hours pass by. The answers will change from stage to stage, but the goal remains the same, to live as fully as I can in each moment gifted to me.