"Embrace life and look forward."

Abu Kais (at Michael Totten's blog) on life and death:
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001334.html

I was raised by my grandmother. Not once did she tell me that I should die. Her husband, who met her at a tobacco field when she was a teenager, threw a fit one day when I threatened to quit college following an argument with my parents. “You will graduate,” he would order me.

I graduated three times after that, but he wasn’t there to see it. Both he and my grandmother, two Shia villagers who migrated to Beirut to raise their children, did not see their favorite grandson (or so they told me), graduate. Both, however, instilled in me the rejection of death as an objective in life. They were both illiterate. My grandmother never missed a prayer. Yet she never told me that I should sacrifice my life. They said go and learn, and hoped they would see the day when I am successful with children of my own.

My grandparents are with me every minute of the day telling me to embrace life and look forward.