"Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die."

This week I was called into the hospital to be with the family of a man who had died suddenly while playing baseball. On the one hand, the family took comfort in the fact that he died doing what he loved. But there was no way to really make sense of this sudden death, this life cut off in mid-life, and this sense that there was no proper ending or way to say "Good-bye."

Death is always the "Stealer of Life" even when we know that the person has had a long life and has suffered through a long illness. Even in those cases when we know that "death is a blessing," there is still a sense of wanting one more conversation, one more time to be together, one more chance to hold hands.  For sudden death this sense of injustice and loss and this desire for more time  is multiplied ten-fold.

So how can we possibly prepare for the unlikely event of sudden death? The key seems to live life well in the moment. Rabbi Harold Kushner has said that the most radical book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. It is a small book of wisdom that tells how the writer tries many different paths to find meaning in life and finds it all to be ultimately meaningless—"All is vanity, vanity, and a chasing after the wind." But this sage does not end there. What he discovers is that life has meaning in the living of each day and in the relationships we develop. He says that all of our great goals and strivings add up to little in the end, but what is valuable is to approach each day with joy. He says to get up in the morning, eat breakfast with someone you love, dress joyfully, and spend the day doing work that you find fullfilling. The common corruption of that advice is "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die."  That sounds like saying you be a party animal (which is one of the avenues of living that the sage tries and finds empty), but that is not what is meant. What is meant is closer to the common advice: "Live each day as if it were your last."

A blessed Friday the 13th to us all.