How does William Saroyan use imagery in Resurrection of a Life?

From the first sentence of "Resurrection of a Life" to the last, William Saroyan incorporates numerous contrasting images, ideas, and feelings. The story opens with the narrator stating:

Everything begins with inhale and exhale, and never ends, moment after moment, yourself inhaling, and exhaling, seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, moving, sleeping, waking, day after day and year after year, until it is now, this moment, the moment of your being, the last moment, which is saddest and most glorious.

This opening tells the reader that the story will be dynamic in its presentation of opposites, and that this presentation will serve a purpose beyond merely pointing out that everything has an opposite.