Death is a declarative punctuation mark – a period in a life full of commas and semicolons. Death is a full stop, the end of opportunities for the deceased and those who knew them. Death is cruel like that.

~ Hugh Hollowell from, https://www.soverybeautiful.org/if-we-love-we-grieve/

I like the punctuation metaphor. I like the finality of the imagery. When I read that turn of phrase, I heard the sharp crack of a mechanical typewriter striking the period. I’m just not sure that the metaphor is apt for the experience of someone else’s death. That’s always been more like turning the page, midway through a book, and discovering the next face—and alas all the subsequent pages—are inexplicably blank. That’s not a period or an ellipses or even a highbrow em-dash. That’s just

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