Death

Making a Death Mask (1908)

It's hard to digest finality. If you've ever been with someone who's going through the dying process, it can be almost incomprehensible. At one moment, they display signs of life. Whether there's any sentience in the death rattle state when the body fuel is almost spent is up for grabs. The personality recedes until it crosses the event horizon of the black hole. You may find yourself hovering over a loved one, as they take their last breath, but like Eurydice they're being pulled to the underworld, with neither their goodbyes reaching you, nor yours finding them. The only other part of the life process that similarly defies explanation is birth. The first cry and the last breath—lend credence to the existence of a soul. The human arrives for a finite stay and then, at the end, is gone forever, their essence irretrievably lost, the conversation ended sometimes in mid-sentence. 

Read "Died Young," by Francis Levy, The Brooklyn Rail

and listen to "Our Day Will Come" by Ruby and the Romantics