Great Chain of Being

My 73d birthday today. As Saul Bellow used to say, I don't need to visit cemeteries; the ghosts come and visit me. Now this:

Quand nous avons dépassé un certain âge, l'âme de l'enfant que nous fûmes et l'âme des morts dont nous sommes sortis viennent nous jeter a poignée leur richesses et leurs mauvais sorts, demandant à coopérer aux nouveaux sentiments que nous éprouvons et dans lesquels, effacant leur ancienne effigie, nous les refondons en une création originale. ... Nous devons recevoir, dès une certaine heure, tous les parents arrivés de si loin et assemblés autour de nois.

That is:

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation. … We have to give hospitality, at a certain stage in our lives, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered round us.

--Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past V, 82