"When a person dies, there is a sudden collapse of all that they knew. The complex and fragile framework of their worldview, which is a unique thing in all the universe, drops to the ground like the contents of a pricked water balloon. The depth of that loss is incomprehensible. What is left after death are ghost-like shreds of your personality that live in the memories of those who knew you. Some warped version of you exists in the stories and the sorrow. And then those stories fade."
