Montaigne did not have a death wish. He had a life wish. Yet he knew this wish could not be fully realized without coming to terms with death. We might think life and death are strictly sequential: we live, then we die. The truth, says Montaigne, is that “death mingles and fuses with our lives throughout.” We don’t die because we are sick. We die because we are alive. Montaigne thinks of death in ways I didn’t believe possible. Not only does he contemplate it but he plays with it and even—I realize this sounds odd—befriends it. “I want death to have a share in the ease and comfort of my life.
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