Memento Mori

The sequence runs the length of a life. It opens on the odds against being here at all, then on the grandmother whose warning gives the song its name. From there it simply ages: a newborn’s fingers around a thumb, first kisses, the rocking chair and the late-night office screen, the old man who appears in the shaving mirror. The last third turns toward death without flinching — bags packed, a wish to die of laughter — and closes on the long view: forgotten in three generations, still heard in the wind, and finally the plain arithmetic of nothing, something, everything.