"This morning a splendid dawn passed over our house on its way to Kansas.  This morning Kansas rolled out of its sleep into a sunlight grandly announced, proclaimed throughout heaven, one more of the very finite number of days that this old prairie has been called Kansas, or Iowa.  But it has all been one day, that first day.  Light is constant, we just turn over in it.  So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning.  My grandfather's grave turned into the light, and the dew on his weedy little mortality patch was glorious.

'Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond.'

While I'm thinking of it--when you are an old man like I am, you might think of writing some sort of account of yourself, as I am doing.  In my experience of it, age has a tendency to make one's sense of oneself harder to maintain, less robust in some ways.

Why do I love the thought of you old?  That first twinge of arthritis in your knee is a thing I imagine with all the tenderness I felt when you showed me your loose tooth.  Be diligent in your prayers, old man.  I hope you will have seen more of the world than I ever got around to seeing--only myself to blame.  And I hope you will have read some of my books.  And God bless your eyes, and your hearing also, and of course your heart.  I wish I could help you carrry the weight of many years.  But the Lord will have that fatherly satisfaction."

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, 209-210