Blog

A long time ago, I watched a Japanese movie called After Life. It takes place in a sort of way station between death and eternity. As far as I remember – and after all, I am getting old, so who knows – the dead would spend 7 days there reviewing their life to choose the moment in which they would spend eternity. Once they had chosen, the staff of the place would recreate it and voila! eternity would start.

I thought – and still think – this is the one of the most charming ideas I’ve ever heard of and naturally started thinking about my moment immediately. The problem is, I can’t choose just one. I have narrowed it down to a handful and wonder if they’d let me have a sort of slideshow, so I don’t have to let go of a few favourites…

For as long as I can remember, touching a tiger has been #1 on my Life List (i.e., the “list of things to do before I die”). Six years ago, Ken worked some magic and made it happen. With mor as driver, we went to a wildlife sanctuary north of Toronto and I saw, smelled and touched Siberian tigers (flat hand through a chain link fence – I’m not crazy). I learned how to say ‘hi’ in tigerspeak and had the best time. By the way? An adult Siberian tiger is really, really big. This is Tsar

I smelled of tiger the entire way home. Because I also got to hold one. A four-week-old cub called Rain. And this moment is on the shortlist for my eternity: