He was moving "more toward trying to figure what death is, and what my place in the world is."  So remarked a doctor who treated poet Max Ritvo in the final days of his life. A highly acclaimed young poet, Ritvo passed away last week at the tender age of, like British poet John Keats, 25.  It was a bitter end to a promising career.  A book of his poetry will appear in the fall of this year.
     As I have pondered this quote, I constantly return to the enigma of death.  Whether or not we believe in an afterlife, death remains an intractable mystery.  Sure, we can explain, through science and/or religion, why people die, but we still struggle with its immensity.  How can we grasp the notion of an earthly end, a point at which we no longer exist on this planet?  It's insuperably difficult.  And what about Ritvo's other quest, to understand his place in the world?  Do not we all wonder about this, too?  Whether we are famous and, in the eyes of many, accomplished, or relatively obscure, mere specks amidst the lengthy annals of time and history, we wonder:  what are we to do, given the inevitability of death, with this life in which we find ourselves?
     Though I (and undoubtedly many others) can offer some theological frameworks and possible answers to these questions, in the end what you decide about them will be what you believe to be, in your heart of hearts, potential, possible, and true.  No one can decide for another.
     Yet when all is said and done, we can only do what the parameters, those here, there, and everywhere, of our experience allow us to do.  For how can we really know?
     What is more probable in a universe in which matter and energy interchange constantly:  an end that is open--or an end that is closed?
     Rest well, Max Ritvo.