Summary

“Endings and Beginnings” is the final section of Dying: A Memoir. Taylor first writes about Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, who claimed he came “into consciousness” (74) at a specific moment when his car emerged from a dark tunnel during a drive to suddenly put him face-to-face with the shining sea. This prompts Taylor to describe a moment which “dragged [her] out of unconsciousness” (73) in which a kookaburra ate a skink. Taylor explains that the moment made her realize that “things live until they die” (73). The kookaburra also leads her to reminisce of her first garden, in which she became acquainted with nature and animals, feeling that her own body differed very little from the bodies of other living things. “I enjoyed my body in the same way the animals enjoyed their bodies,” she says, “I liked to lie in the warmth the same...