One of the qualities of death is that it does not bring with it any closure. It does not bring our lives to an end in the way the last chapter of a novel or the last scenes of a film wind up the story and give meaning to the events that have come before. Death does not allow our lives to come to some sort of fruition. It simply curtails life. It may stop it in its tracks quite suddenly, or we might be permitted to hear the trundling of its dark carriage from a distance, but it does not complete the story for us. That’s for us to do, if we are given the chance.
