Finally...

" I am fading away. Slowly but surely. like the sailor who watches his home shores gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory. "

Jean-Dominique Bauby in "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly"

And sooner or later I too, my whole being, memory and all will be reduced to a fistful of ashes.
backhand flick.