death and questions

Much of what I fear is really about death (or perhaps being old). Things are not as they were. I am frightened that the brightness will go from my eyes. I am scared that my wonder and my questions will go.

Like this? -

"I can tell you, then, that I am afraid of death. Not of what we imagine about death, for this fear is itself imaginary. Nor of my death whose date will be recorded in the civic registers of the state. But of that death I suffer every moment, of the death of that voice which, out of the depths of my childhood keeps asking , as yours does: "What am I?" and which everything within us and around us seems bent on stifling. When this voice does not speak - and it does not speak often! - I am an empty carcass, a restless cadaver. I am afraid that one day it will fall silent forever, or that it will wake up too late - as in your story of the flies: when you wake up, you're dead."

- Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue, 1981 (taken from http://www.gardendigest.com/death.htm) bold added by me.

There's a Leunig cartoon that says just the same thing.

How do I stop it? Love?