I spent the weekend thinking about death and fighting the urge to leave the present moment. It is easy to think I should fall in love, launch a business, or do something else big and significant right now. But that’s the trap, isn’t it?

I’m not talking about putting things off as if we have forever. But living each day as if it might be your last takes away permission to do things like take naps or do the dishes. It fosters this do it now, do it all attitude that is not at all like life.

As I mentioned in my last post, a friend from my divorce class died last week. She was a gourmet cook, a title I don’t claim at all. But Thursday night, as I spoke with another friend from our class, I made a pasta dish that I haven’t prepared since my husband left. My almost-four-year old won’t eat it and the leftovers are only good for one day so I hadn’t gone to the trouble for myself.

I thought of my friend as I ate it. I pictured her kitchen. I really tasted my food. And I texted my neighbor to ask if she and her husband would like pasta to take to work for lunch the next day.

What else did I do with my most recent reminder of mortality? I changed what used to be a dining room into a library. We don’t need a big dining table. I rarely host dinner parties and if I do, they’re potlucks or dinners so big we don’t all fit at the table anyway.

My dining table has just been another surface to gather mail, a hammer, the random ball of socks. So, instead of continuing to live in my house with one whole room wasted because houses have dining rooms, I repurposed it into a room I can love and hang out in.

I brought the massage chair downstairs, the same chair that I bought for my (now ex-) husband. It’s been in the master bedroom, where it almost never gets used because we only go in there to sleep. And if my son is sleeping, the chair makes enough noise that he sometimes wakes up. Now, it’s in the library where I can read and get a “sammage” (as Cavanaugh calls it) any time.

Room by room I am making my house my own, not looking at the remnants of my marriage in the places my ex used to sit or sleep or work. That is living.

The thing is, I’d moved the bookcases back in that morning, before I heard of my friend’s death. I’d gone to the grocery store that afternoon after our neighbor brought over homemade bread because it begged to be eaten with this pasta dish. Plus the tomatoes I had were going to go bad is I didn’t use them pronto.

So I did what I was already planning to do with my day and my night. I unpacked. I made food.

I just did it more mindfully and with a great appreciation to be here, to taste fresh basil, grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and roasted pine nuts on bow tie pasta lightly coated with lemon juice, balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

If any day could be my last, I am glad to be learning to enjoy this day, whatever I may be doing.

How do you react to the reminder of your own mortality? Do you speed up, slow down, or something else entirely?