My oldest memory is of drowning. People tell me that I can't possibly remember it since I was only two and a half at the time: I fell in some shallow water by the river's edge where I had been playing. I remember air bubbles flying up in the bright yellow water before me. I seem to remember thinking -- "so this is it, this is how it feels". This last can't possibly be a memory, it must be a kind of soundtrack added later, perhaps taken from a rather serious car accident in which I was later, as an adult.
My second memory is of waking up crying at night. I was perhaps four or five and had been put to sleep in my god-mother's room. The room had thick curtains and I was not used to sleeping in darkness that deep. My mother came to ask what troubled me. "Is it true that I am going to have to die?" I asked through tears. She answered wisely, not giving me the usual crap about immortal soul and heaven, but saying simply: yes, but it is a very long time before you have to worry about it." That calmed me; but though I have never feared death since then as a result, I have not stopped thinking about it; I have taken the awareness of my death as a kind of reminder that I am not allowed to waste my time. A kind of goad: that I must get done what I mean to do; that I must do it now.
The thing is: unlike most people, I have decided that the thing I must do before I die is not write a great American novel; or start a great political movement; or win the Nobel peace prize; or make any other important contribution to the lives of others; but make an important contribution to mine, the sort of contribution no one else would care to, or be able to make: be happy.
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