St. Paisios, "Spiritual Counsels IV: Family Life"

"Back in the old days in coenobetic monasteries, there was a monk who was assigned the task of reminding the other Fathers about death. When everyone was doing chores, he would go around to each Father and say, "Brother, we are going to die." 

"This great mystery is not easily understood by those who are merely "flesh", which is why they don't want to die; they don't even want to hear about death.

"Fortunately, our benevolent God provides so that people are helped in the process, especially the elderly who are naturally closer to death. Their hair becomes grey; their courage and endurance is diminished; their strength gradually abandons them; they start to drool - a humbling process which leads them to philosophize on the vanity of this world. Even if they want to be naughty, they just can't - not in their condition. And when they hear of someone their age or younger who has died, they are reminded of death. In the villages, when the church bell tolls for a funeral, all the elderly sitting in the coffee shops stand up, do their cross and ask who has died and when was he born. And they say to each other, "Well, our time will also come; we're all leaving this world."

St. Paisios, "Spiritual Counsels IV: Family Life"