Mortality Quote by Basil C. Hume

Mortality is the one appointment nobody gets to cancel, and Basil C. Hume leans into that blunt calendar logic to puncture our obsession with “better weeks” and fresh starts. The line doesn’t offer comfort so much as it removes the pretense that comfort is guaranteed. Death is “the one certain fact,” then grief isn’t a surprise plot twist; it’s a regular feature of the human schedule. By pairing the absolute (“one certain fact”) with the ordinary (“next week… last week”), Hume collapses the gap between the cosmic and the mundane. Suffering isn’t framed as a rare catastrophe. It’s framed as continuity.

The intent feels pastoral, even if you don’t know his title: a kind of moral permission slip for people who are exhausted by optimism. In religious settings, especially sermons around funerals or public tragedy, listeners often arrive burdened by the idea that they should be “moving on.” Hume’s phrasing disarms that pressure. It normalizes sadness without romanticizing it.

The subtext is a critique of the modern fantasy of control. We plan, optimize, self-improve, and still the hardest truths recur on a weekly cadence. There’s also a quiet call to solidarity: if sorrow was here last week and will be here next week, then it’s shared, not a personal failure. The quote works because it refuses melodrama. Its power is its steady gaze - grief as weather, death as gravity - and the invitation to live more honestly inside that forecast.