A couple of weeks ago I took the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum’s collection of encaustic paintings from the Roman period in Egypt caught my fancy. These lifelike paintings were placed over mummies, as was the one in my photo. The man pictured here lived in the first century A.D. Look into his eyes, at his little mustache — he’s a regular guy, just like me. He was as real a man as I am. And yet, he’s been gone from this life for nineteen hundred years. Life is short.