Immortality is something we can't escape

This morning I was about to hang my clothes on the line before taking my daughter to horse riding when I got a phone call from a voice from the past - my old room mate from University- calling to tell me one of our neighbours who was near and dear to both our hearts had died the day before at 5pm. She had been suffering from seizures and died. We chatted for a long time about days gone by, people that have come and gone in our lives, relationships and their challenges as well as the prospect of so much coming from all directions - "everything at once," was her statement to be exact.
I said to her, "It's because death is getting near to us."
She defensively said," What do you mean by that?"
"We are getting older so people our age and the generation before us are dying," I said.
"Yes," she said reflectively. And we both went quiet thinking about what my statement meant and how it felt for both of us. We hung up on a good note wishing each other well, me telling her she needed to start living and stop cooping herself up because she had been hurt before. Me telling her that she was too young to cut herself off from life. She thanking me for the pep talk.
After we hung up, I went outside to the line to hang out the last bit of clothes still thinking about the conversation I had just had then my mind wondered to the fact that a woman I had gone to high school died last week and was buried on Wednesday. She was my age, 48, and she left behind a husband and two children. I thought about whether she was happy when she died. Wondered if she was satisfied with what she had accomplished. Wondered how I would feel if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, could I say I had lived my life to the fullest?
Despite going on with my Saturday activities, my mind kept wondering back to the two deaths that were fairly close to me and the conversation I had had with my ex roommate when I bumped into my cousin who told me about a mutual friend who is in her early forties who was air ambulanced out last night to a hospital in the US in grave condition and I got chill bumps.
I said to her, "You know I have decided that I am not going to deprive myself anymore of anything I want because life is too short. I am going to eat whatever I feel like - bread, cake, potato chips, whatever I like of course in moderation - because you just never know when your time is going to be up."
She agreed wholeheartedly. Of course I was saying these things in jest but once I walked away from her and started driving home the fact that our mortality is something we have to face and think about struck me. I thought about how we take so much of our every day actions for granted because they are always there.
Finding out about these deaths and the grave condtiion my friend is in made me truly appreciate how much we have to be happy in the moment we are in, we need to make the most out of what we have, we need to be grateful for every breath we take, and for having another day on this earth. And most of all we need to live a life of joy, throwing out our inhibitions and fears because at some point we will all have to face the fact that we are mortals. We all have to face the fact that our mortality is ticking away each second, each minute, each hour, each day. We can't stop it or change it but we can enjoy each second, minute, hour and day we have. That's my promise to myself.