Life is full of little endings. We should pay them more attention

The end of the year seems a good time to think about lasts. Not many of us ever do. Firsts are always landmarks: the first time you taste alcohol, drive a car, have sex. Then the first time your child talks, walks, goes to school. All are noted at the time, stored away in the mental file marked ‘life events’. But when do we ever notice, much less remember, a last? We’re doing them a disservice — in many cases they’re even more poignant than the firsts.

One problem, of course, is that we often don’t know it’s a last at the time. You’ll register your last day in a job, or your last exit from a house you’ve owned. Recovering alcoholics note (though only in retrospect) the occasion of their last drink. But the last time you go to London? Eat oysters? Cry? Only decades later will you realise that a last has occurred, by which time the event itself may well be lost in the fog we call memory.