Dmitry Glukhovsky. Twilight (№ 415073)

After all, all human life, in fact, is a slow dying. It is not even we who are dying - the world around us gradually fades. In the first years of our life, and it is in its prime. (Isn't that why childhood memories are so vivid?) We are surrounded by close creatures - father, mother, grandmothers, grandfathers, friends from kindergarten and school come for them, first love blossoms. These are the cornerstones on which the small universe of each of us is based. In childhood and adolescence, it is completely real and tangible, while all people dear to us are with us among the living. With each of them we are connected by myriads of the finest threads: common thoughts, shared vacations, light, dizzy novels, an outstretched hand. Weaving together memories and experiences, these people weave the silk yarn of our reality, our world, our life.
But the years go by, and they - one by one - leave us, turn into ethereal ghosts and find their last refuge in our memories. Trying to make our native voice sound even for a fraction of a second in our head, trying to return from oblivion the charm of their smile, we can spend hours in vain looking at their photographs. The pain of losing a loved one cannot be overcome; only time dulls it.
And with each new death, our Universe is shifting more and more into another dimension - into the plane of our fantasies, the plane of our memory. It goes into the past, we live less and less for today, and more and more immerse ourselves in yesterday, which is indistinctly and vaguely imprinted in our consciousness.
The first to leave are grandmothers and grandfathers, the dog that was with us while we were growing up dies, and our childhood dies with them. Their death is a milestone: after it, the so-called maturity begins.
Then it is the turn of the parents; when they leave us, it will mean that adulthood is over, and we froze on the threshold of old age. And then one of the long-gray school friends or the toothless, but with the same enthusiasm of the university comrades who were smiling at us, dies; finally, a husband or wife.
This is the last sign: it's time for us to prepare too. Because our whole world, like a dying huge ocean liner, is plunging into the abyss of the past. Dark waters will drop by drop fill the cabins of memories, inhabited by the images of colleagues, army colleagues, phantoms of fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters ... They will rush into luxurious banquet halls, where we celebrated our little triumphs: successfully passed school exams, hard-won admission to the university, love victories, weddings and births of children, expected job promotions for years. The holds, where the black hours of our life are dumped, will also be flooded: we would like to batten them down tightly, but memory gapes with cracks, the edges of which will never converge.
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... When the waves of oblivion reach the captain's bridge and lick our feet, it will only be necessary to salute with dignity for the last time and silently close our eyes. And then we, in turn, will become the borderline that will mark the end of childhood for our grandchildren and the beginning of old age for our children.