quoted in Peter Kreeft's Love is Stronger than Death, a book I had given Steve a few years ago because I loved the author, but one neither of us had read yet.....
"In a life conscious of its temporal end in death, everything is seen as an end in itself, that is, as something intrinsically valuable. Emily realizes this in Thornton Wilder's play Our Town. When she sees her past life from the perspective of death (she has just died), she says to the Stage Manager:
I can't. I can't go on. Oh! Oh! It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another....I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back---up the hill----to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and Coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realizle you. (She looks toward teh Stage Manager and asks abruptly, through her tears) Do any human beings ever realize life while they livi it? - every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No. (Pause) The saints and poets, maybe - they do some."