Dying

There is a distinction to be made between dying and death. It´s not all uninterrupted dying. If one's healthy and feeling well, it´s invisible dying. The end that is a certainty is not necessarily boldly announced. No, you can't understand. The only thing you understand about the old when you are not old is that they have been stamped by their time. But understanding only that freezes them in their time, and so amounts to no understanding at all. To those not yet old, being old means you've been. But being old also means that despite, in addition to, and in excess of your beenness, you still are. Your beenness is very much alive. You still are, and one is a haunted by the still-being and its fullness as by the having-already-been, by the pastness. Think the old age this way: it's just an everyday fact that one's life is at stake.


The dying animal
Philip Roth