About a week ago, I finished reading (or actually, in part, rereading) Ernest Hemmingway's Farewell to Arms.  That it is written in Hemmingway's typically laconic style should not surprise anyone, and that it concludes with a matter of fact ending should raise no eyebrows for those who are familiar with Hemmingway's writing.  As the story draws to a close, we are told that the lead character (and narrator), having just been informed that his soon to be wife and new born child have both died, "Put on his hat and walked into the rain."  And that's it.
     Two summers ago, while my wife and I were traveling through Idaho, we spent a night in Ketchum.  As the evening came on, we walked through town to see Hemmingway's grave.  Set toward the rear of the cemetery, it is not difficult to find.  Its nearly five foot long (and flat) marker is covered with empty bottles of various alcoholic beverages and coins of varying amounts.  A tree hangs over it.  It is easily the most visited grave in the cemetery.
     Judging from the bottles and coins, it seems that many of those who have viewed the grave wished to leave what they believed to be an appropriate memorial to a man who, to all accounts, lived an adventurous, if not angst filled existence, a man who tried to live what he had been given to the fullest.  Hemmingway engaged, avidly, in life's pleasures.
     Yet in 1961, Hemmingway tragically took his own life, blowing his brains out with a shotgun.  Like the protagonist of Farewell to Arms, he took his "hat" and walked into the rain.  Although his protagonist did not choose the eternal rain of Hemmingway, his actions speak powerfully to the novel's point.  In a world devoid of meaning, a world riven with the carnage of World War I the novel describes so well, a world in which life seems to have been cheapened beyond measure, what more could one do but walk into the rain?
     I guess that depends on how one views the rain.  Doesn't it always end?