It’s 3.00am and my daughter is awake. I go to cuddle her and realise she’s crying. ‘I don’t want to die’, she says, ‘Or you to die. What will happen? Would you miss me?’ I get a flashback to my own childhood and the moment when the realisation hit that me and everyone I knew and loved was going to die someday. I recalled the fear, the sadness. Here it was replayed in front of me.

I want to support my daughter through her worries, but 3.00am with a 3 year old is no time for philosophy. We have stories as our common language and lots of them. I remember the stories that helped me, inspired me, that taught me that it was important to have your own story to tell at the end of your life and that you had to work hard to create it. All those little bits of hope, wisdom and guidance kept me going even though I didn’t even know I had them until I needed them.

They taught me that my own worries about death, when I was able to stand up and address them rather than shy away or ignore them, gave me insight into what I really cared about. I was thinking about the people I wanted to spend time with, and was terrified I wouldn’t get to write my own stories or learn or see anything new. My passions came to light when a limit was put upon my time. I don’t always get it right, but now I have this awareness I hope I am living in accordance with these passions, so that when I come to the end of my life, I can rest with the knowledge not that I did everything, but that I did my thing.