No two people in the world are perfectly matched, but one of the things that binds me and my wife together is a common instinct for the shortness of life. We both know in our quaking bones that death comes swiftly, unexpectedly, that human beings are fragile things easily broken and slowly repaired, that sanity, health, and wholeness slip away from us at some unavoidable deadline marked in red on the calendar.

And yet, when in the earliest hour of the morning, I bend down to my sleeping wife before I head out to work and I press my cheek to her cheek, my breast to her breast, I wrap my arms around the comforter covered shape of her, she smiles at me through a dim semi-consciousness and I know what she is feeling because I feel it the same: that neither of us can see the end of things yet, and that for these two or three minutes a little act of tenderness feels like it could stretch until eternity.