Hi NatR,
Actually your "the minute by minute, hour by hour, of each day we live right up to the last day?" is one of the reasons that I started using 'quality of living'. 'Life' is a noun -- the whole of our lives (which is really 'our lifeterm') or the whole of life on this planet. 'Living' is a verb -- what we DO minute by minute, etc. -- which, of course, we are still DOing as we are actively dying as well.
And yes, I agree -- we are, in fact, terminal beings -- moving towards our destiny with death from the moment of our birth; and maybe someday we will learn (or re-learn) how to honour our on-going living AND dying throughout our lifeterm.