Priests preach about the grave. Buddhists say, let the sureness of your final long sleep serve as a wake-up call now. Jews remind us of impermanence with this tale:

A man came from New York to a well-known European rabbi’s large house. Entering the rabbi’s room, the guest saw only a bed, a chair and a few books. He asked, “Rabbi, where’s your stuff?” The rabbi replied, “Where is yours?” The New Yorker answered, “I’m just passing through.” The rabbi said, “So am I.”

I recall my first time. Age 32 and mom to a 2-year-old, I received a phone call: A car had killed my cousin’s 3-year-old daughter, Erin.

Right then, I made a vow: I wouldn’t yell about table manners. I would love; that’s all that counts. I promised to stop scooting around on my knees hourly to swipe dust from our wooden floors.

Then I forgot.

After Erin’s accident, I rocked Alisa, sang, danced around the sunlit nursery with her and played peekaboo. Then over time, I’d lay her in her playpen so I could I wipe the floor, sweep every green pea flicked from the high chair and scoop each last blob of applesauce.

My brother, Mike, spotted these obsessions. Even now, he taps me, “Hey. Life’s too short.”

I know. I yearn to smell the roses. But I forget. Yoga teachers tell us our every act costs us some life force. Yes, I say to myself in class, that means I need to do what I value.

Yet, off the mat I alphabetize spices or write one more e-mail to work on a friendship in which the other person doesn’t answer.

Poet Mary Oliver writes: “When death comes, I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Me neither. When my patty-caking, hide-and-seeking, singing-at-the piano grandfather died, I became determined to play like a kid as he did. I started to ski again, having dropped that free body expression, that inner and outer spaciousness to fit the confines of “grown-up.”

After Pepere died, I drove to the same snowy mountain under the same big sky where I first fell in love with Maine winter. I traversed the same glistening slopes on which I once chased my schoolmates through the trees. I skied, until I had to wash my car instead. Or read People magazine. I forget what stopped me from laughing.

A year ago, I wrote a eulogy for my father’s funeral. After his death, I felt only his absence. Lately I know his presence. He is with me, settled in my heart. I hear his voice and feel his smile; that is, unless I forget.

Recently I sat at two funerals on the same day. At 10 a.m., we celebrated a 64-year-old friend. Mary Oliver’s words haunted me, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

At noon, we honored the humility of an 83-year-old surgeon. Both lives were too short, and with the rawness of these losses, I vow once more to show up for life, to be alive while I’m alive and to love. Now.

I hope I remember, because as one of my meditation teachers repeats and repeats, “Look around. When will you wake up? The problem is we think we have time.”

Susan Lebel Young teaches yoga and mindfulness and is the author of “Lessons from a Golfer: A Daughter’s Story of Opening the Heart.” She can be reached at: sly313@aol.com