Ben Lowry: Giving thanks for the gift of life
I had never heard of the footballer Ugo Ehiogu, above, who has died aged 44, but it is chilling and sad to hear of the death of someone who is younger than oneself.
The poor guy did not recover from a cardiac arrest.
It is easy to forget that every day we wake up to the great gift of life, the fragility of which we should never forget but which we do forget.
I was on a long night train up the American east cost last year which had an African American woman serving in the restaurant car who was relentlessly friendly, always smiling and patient, that I finally asked her how she stayed so upbeat. “I wake up every day,” she said, adding that she had had a colleague who one day had not woken up.
It is a humbling way to look at things, when you consider how stressed and cranky many of us are in the mornings.
• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor