I don’t often think of death before breakfast. Twilight cuts a better metaphor—the sun slumping under the horizon, the fell creep of darkness overhead, the bustle of the day slipping into silence. At such times, thoughts of death are almost natural, inevitable. Another day, another ending. But mornings are dense with untainted optimism, the verve that accompanies a new day—fresh, untapped, ripe with opportunity, cast with a light so golden it feels swallowable, like you could pour it into a glass and sip of its sweetness. 

But I thought about death that morning. I hadn’t even made it to breakfast yet when it crept upon my mind, not darkly and not uninvited, but nonetheless marked by its own quiet sombreness. I was at the tail-end of a morning walk, which was for me not a rarity but still a treat. One can hardly wander hushed country lanes and quiet city streets, watching as the world rises around them, without feeling the profound relish of aliveness. Warm sunlight hugged my bare arms and, although the temperature was mild—especially for spring, thanks to the unusually hot spring we’d been enjoying—a cool breeze tousled the yawning leaves. 

Across the road I spotted Ida, an old lady who lives down the street from me. She moved along with her cane—Tap. Tap. Tap.—stopping in front of each house to crane her neck up for a view. The craning was an unfortunate necessity. Her back was curved like a stern frown, her neck extending from it not upwards but at a 45° angle that made me straighten my posture on impulse, so that she had to plant her cane and lean backwards in order to regard even the front porch of a home. 

I spotted her and, to my embarrassment, hoped she had not spotted me. Breakfast was calling, and I was eager to sit down and being writing for the morning, a fresh cup of tea at my elbow. Even a short conversation was more than I was inclined to have. I was an entire wide street across from her, but as I attempted to scurry past, she pivoted on her cane and leaned back to gaze at me. 

“Oh, hello there!” she called, lengthening each of her vowels into an almost pirate-like drawl.

I offered her a wave and a warm greeting, pausing on my toes, like a runner at a stoplight. 

“Are you going that way?” she asked, gesturing with her cane in the direction I was, in fact, walking. 

I was, I said. My home was on her side of the street, but I was going in that general direction. 

“Oooh, good! I’ll walk with you.” 

What was I to say? Even in the 21st century, with our evolving manners and informalities, it’s generally unacceptable to refuse the company of an elderly lady who wants your company on her walk. 

I waited as she ponderously navigated the sloped curb and made her way onto the street, hoping she wouldn’t fall or get hit by a car. I was worried for her well-being, yes, but with the way our public health care was being run, a call to 911 would also take up half my day. I like to think it was the first consideration that compelled me to quickly cross the street to help her. I offered her my arm. She gripped my hand instead. 

I inwardly recoiled—out of surprise, not disgust. Hand-holding is to me an intimate touch, like a kiss, ten interlocked fingers that communicate a world: trust, adoration, respect, comfort, strength, companionship, solidarity, affection, unity. I’ve previously admitted my belief to friends that while a kiss may mean any number of things, hand-holding is a declaration of love. They thought me crazy. But still. 

Ida’s hand was cold to the touch, her fingers closed around mine far tighter than mine were around hers. Her grip, I mused, was strong. Novels often remark something along those lines, don’t they? “Her grip was surprisingly strong, despite the cruel advance of years.” For a moment, my life took the colour of a work of fiction. But then I thought, “What if this is as strong as her grip gets? What if she’s actually clutching my hand for all her might, and this is all the strength her body has left?” That thought was sobering. 

When we reached the opposite sidewalk, Ida didn’t release my hand. 

“Wow, I like your shoes!” she said as we began walking. 

 I could easily see her house from where we stood. It was perhaps nine or ten houses down from us, a distance my strong gait could have closed in a minute or two. At Ida’s pace, took us almost forty minutes. This was partially due to her manner of walking, which was marked by that unusual style of untethered exploration we typically associate with small children. She’d stop and read off the names of every camper and boat we passed. She’s pause and eye each yard, commenting on the condition of the lawn. “Wow, they sure do have a lot of dandelions!” she’d declare. Or she’d ask why there was a box of flowers sitting in front of a person’s garage. (“Perhaps they’re planting baskets?” I offered gently.) 

Often, she’d wander up people’s driveways and peer through their fences, remarking on the state of their backyards: “Look at these shiny bikes! I wonder what they use them for?” This, peeking into places most of us understand to be off-limits, I knew was Ida’s odd habit. On more than one occasion, I’d been startled when her eye suddenly appeared through a hole in the fence that led to our back patio, or when I turned to gaze out of my office window only to find her not fifteen feet away, staring straight at me. They were peculiarities I’d grown, if not comfortable with (one never really grows comfortable with unexpectedly finding someone staring through their window), at least warmly familiar with. After my heart would stop racing, all I could think was, “Ah, Ida. What a neighbourhood icon.” So when she peered into other people’s yards on our walk, I assumed everyone else was as accustomed to her friendly intrusions as I was. 

“Wow, those are nice shoes!” she declared again, staring down at my feet, which is where her eyes most naturally fell. She’d comment three more times on how lovely my shoes—unremarkable running shoes—were before our walk had finished. 

“Thank you, Ida,” I smiled. 

She leaned to look over at me. Her left eye was milky white with age, but her sight was surprisingly sharp. “You’re tiny! How much do you weigh?” 

When I told her, she was shocked. “That’s more than me! But you’re so tiny.” Then she told me she liked my body. 

Had it been anyone else, I might have flushed. But time had stripped Ida of her inhibitions, and I knew she meant it sincerely, without insinuation or affectation. So I laughed and thanked her heartily.

But I also recognized a vague longing in her words. I had, after all, what she had lost: youth, strength, balance, speed. She’d once been a runner, I knew, so perhaps in my leggings and sports gear I reminded her of a time that she had covered long distances with ease, free from pain, untouched by age. I eyed her obliquely, taking in the thin strands of grey that crowned her head like a memory; the creases on her face, so deep that when she turned and the skin stretched out across her cheekbones, I could see the untanned flesh the sun could not reach; the glassy crooked stare she used to examine each yard and lawn; the hand still held in my own, distended veins soft beneath my fingertips. 

And I it struck me: if I live that long, this is my future. The juxtaposition between us suddenly faded, and I realized we were at different points along the same path. She’d started many decades before me, but in time I would be at the same point she was now. This is less obvious than you’d expect. We think of young and old as opposites, like hot and cold, unable to coexist. Rarely do we consider them simultaneously occupying the same body. I suddenly pictured myself stooped with age, asking a fit, young woman to accompany me for part of my daily solitary walk. Would I too lose all inhibition and begin peering into people’s backyards? Would my neighbours one day regard me with that strange mixture of pity and amusement we reserve for those whose minds have begun to fade? Would I one day remind a different young woman of the transience of her own life?  

My reverie deepened as Ida brushed leaves off of lawns with the tip of her cane. (“Get out of there, you brat!” she ordered a leaf. “Go away and stay away.”) The shortness of life descended on me like a weight, an existential pressure that pushed against my throat and chest. It didn’t taste like fear or dread, necessarily, though it was a near relation. Do we have a word in English to describe the sudden and unexpected sensation of your own inevitable mortality? 

Then Ida turned and looked back over the street we had, very slowly, just traversed. “Look at all those big trees!” she said. I regarded the same view and discovered, to my surprise, how fitting her comment was. The street was swathed with green, the houses dwarfed by towering spruce trees, fluffy maydays, gangly poplars, and wine-tinged cherry trees. It looked like a forest. How had I never noticed it before? 

“Wow,” she added, “those trees are so big!” The appreciation in her voice was obvious. A bird swooped by. “What kind of bird was that?” 

“A pigeon,” I said, watching as it settled on the eavestrough of a nearby house. 

She smiled. “It looks like he wants some food. I fed them over the winter, but I can’t feed all those critters in the summer!” Ida turned towards her own house at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Look at all those big trees behind my house. They’re huge!” 

I looked at them as though seeing them for the first time. And perhaps I was only seeing them for the first time. We may look at a thing a thousand times without really seeing it. This is the heart of appreciation: to turn, to gaze, to consider. It is not merely a physical act, but something akin to ritual, a peeling back of familiarity and assumption to look beyond the veil—to see, to taste, to delight. 

I felt humbled. Here I had thought myself—strong and young—doing Ida a favour by helping her to her own home. But the reverse was true. Ida—old and stooped—was doing me a favour by helping me realize I didn’t even notice home for what it was. So much of my time had been spent in study, pouring over books and articles, writing essays and posts, learning about history and law and philosophy, building a business and pursuing new opportunities, that I had not even slowed down enough to notice how big the trees were. 

It is strange, the richness one can discover on a walk they didn’t want to go on with company they didn’t desire to spend time with. Self-centred exertions can become self-inflicted blindness when we forget to pause—not like a comma or a semicolon, but like a period. A full, non-negotiable stop at the end of a sentence. A pause that demands, “Look, see, experience, appreciate. Remember mortality, that you may better live. Recognize the quiet passion of stillness, and let it fill the corners of your life. Stop and see.” 

We did, at last, arrive at Ida’s home. I, somewhat guiltily, extricated my hand from hers, and I bid her goodbye. She was surprised, as though she’d expected I’d move in with her. I hastened home. The reverie was broken. When I repeated the experience to others later, I couldn’t convey it with appropriate weight. It was tinged more with amusement than with bittersweet reflection. Perhaps my retelling was poor. Perhaps I have, even now, failed to convey the profound commonplaceness of the experience. It was special precisely because it was not. It was made magnificent by its absolute mundanity. What words do we use to describe that moment when life seems to transcend itself? Perhaps there are none, and that is the point. Life must be lived, not told.