(NYTIMES) This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We've always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalise this understanding. It's one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own.

It's not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even to conceive. To do this means to imagine it, reckon with it and, most important, personalise it. Your life. Your death.