The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring

p. 137

“For centuries philosophers have recommended an exercise to lend more gravity to our lives, that is, contemplating our mortality.  A common epitaph one comes across on old tombstones is memento mori, ‘remember, you must die.’  Death is a lonely road and you travel it but once.  So people postpone writing wills, make excuses for not attending funerals, don’t enter cemeteries after dark [or any other time, either, unless they have to], freeze the corpse of loved ones in suspended animation, and practice a hundred other subterfuges to avoid thinking about the inevitable.”