It occurred to me during the midday Ash Wednesday service at All Saints Episcopal Church that I, Susanna Barton, may have been put on this earth with the express purpose of being a small market mortality influencer.

It’s all making sense now. Between the untimely passing of my mother (a most ungracious admission exam for mortality marketing 101), my annual Lenten postings about loss and death, and the whacked out geriatric care situation that inspired a profusion of ruminations on death preparation and accepting and planning for our mortality, I have unexpectedly become a book-writing, workshop-leading, podcast-making aficionado on this taboo topic. What a totally unplanned misadventure it’s been! But the plot line is now clearly in focus, leaving me filled with thoughts about whether this is a calling revealed or a strange obsession reaching its crescendo. I’m pretty sure it’s the former.

These are the thoughts I had with myself in the pews. It made me wonder if the season of Lent and the process of preparing for our second half aren’t actually one and the same.

During Lent we hear about lessening and giving up and preparing our hearts to serve. Yes, we are asked to consider giving up the things we love — the chocolate, the wine, the zesty potty mouth — but maybe that practice is more about humbling ourselves and not showing “piety before others in order to be seen by them,” as the Matthew 6:1-6 gospel explains, than it is about not indulging in the things we love. Maybe Lent is about taking a backseat so good ‘ole Jesus can take the wheel. In that same passage (16-21), Jesus also says some pretty Grand Plans-y stuff: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” It’s pretty clear to me he’s talking about getting rid of your stuff collection, even the Hummel figurines and big heavy dark brown furniture that you just. Can’t. Unload.

The psalm Ash Wednesday recitation was Psalm 103.8-14: “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” This is a Grand Plan essential! No one, not one person on this planet, can escape their mortality. Not even Taylor Swift! Or that weirdo tech millionaire Bryan Johnson who trying to age-reverse by eating $2 million nuts each year. Not even Jocelyn Wildenstein can muster the fillers and surgeries to do it! We are all going to die one day soon, and getting there will not be easy or cheap. But it can be a fun and fulfilling one if we accept and plan for it.

I was relieved to see how Lent, Death and Grand Planning seem to have a special and inexplicable triunity. It makes me feel like this strange and seemingly disjointed second half path I’ve been on is actually one that’s been meandering through my life for a very long time. That feels like purpose to me, and like the good folks at All Saints like to say at the Dismissal with a little arm pump, “Right on!”