At 3, she jumped off the bed.

At 7, she unbuckled her seat belt.

At 12, she went to a sleepover at a friend's house.

At 17, she finally received her driver's license.

At 26, she said yes.

At 30, she went into labor.

At 39, she had one last hurrah.

At 46, she signed the papers to make it final.

At 55, he was diagnosed and had no one to share the news with.

At 61, she celebrated her remission with a night out.

At 22, she looked at herself in the mirror.

At 87, surrounded by her family and friends, she smiled.

There are moments before every tragedy, quick flashes of boredom or happiness, of the expected and unexpected. These moments I see. The little girl jumping off her parents bed and into an unresponsive final state. Another girl attending her first sleepover, excited and giddy, only to succumb to an unknowing fatal nut allergy.

The young woman whose proposal near the shoreline was poorly thought-out, never allowing her to live to see her marriage. The older woman who finally divorced the man she came to loathe, and for that man to not take the finality of it all with dignity or peace.

The man whose diagnosis was terminal. The woman whose 40th birthday ended in heartache and disaster. The girl whose last glimpse in the mirror was of herself, relieved, then raising the pistol to her temple.

These moments, as innocuous as they seem, are the final looks to life before tragedy ultimately hits. And I watch them. I have to. It's my responsibility to take you all from this realm to the next.

It's my duty. And I am sorry; I truly am.

Because now? At this moment, they read the final sentences of a story. Some bored. Some happy. Some expecting this ending; some not.

And I watch as they read these last words, fully oblivious as they are, that this, this is their moment.