Let us take stock of where we are. In asking about death, we have been asking about it as a finality: as a definitive end to a life. We want to understand what this might mean for each of us in his or her living. If death is not final, it is not really death. As we have put it, an afterlife allows us to survive our own death. Some part of you may die, but you don't really die.

What if you do die? What if there is nothing left of you after your heart stops beating and your brainwaves go flat? Then death is simply the stoppage of life. It is not its conclusion in any way other than being the point at which you stop living. Moreover, that stoppage could happen at any moment. All that is certain is that it will happen. The curtain will come down on your life, and it could do so in the middle of the play. You always see the curtain there, hovering above you. You may live so that it is less likely that the curtain will come down sooner rather than later. You may eat well, exercise, drive cautiously. This lowers the probably of the curtain just dropping on you unexpectedly. But it does not eliminate the very possibility of its coming down.