I write this in the faint gleam of the night lamp well past midnight because tomorrow life will take over with more current things, stuff that need to be taken care of, like that telephone bill that has to be paid before the end of the month.

Tomorrow like everyone else still walking, talking and eating on this planet I'll deny death, shut my eyes on its existence in the bold brightness of mid-day sun.

Tonight for two and a half hours when the world around me was asleep I walked through the valley in the shadow of death, in the company of someone who has faced it hundreds of times in her working life.

From Pauline W.Chen - Harvard trained surgeon, a UCLA award recipient for the best surgeon of the year and the winner of several national awards for non-fiction and creative writing comes the revealing and thoughtful book - Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality.

Tomorrow I might not write this at all.

Tonight I hold my loves a little closer, a little more tighter....