Simone de Beauvoir, the famous French feminist and long time companion of the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre devoted much of a book, Force and Circumstance, to this very thing.  In one passage, she writes, "I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did.  I think with sadness of all the books I've read, all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more [she then recounts a few of the remarkable things and places she has seen] . . . all of the things I've talked about, others I have left unspoken--there is no place where it will all live again."

    It's a rather sober reflection on the futility of existence, n'est pas?  But it's real.  One day, everything we know will end.  Though I'm not trying to be morbid, I am seeking to open us to thinking anew about what life means.  Because we are spiritual beings, beings fashioned by a creator God, however we wish to understand this, we ought to view and experience life as more than what we see at the moment.

    Memory is more compelling than a categorical end.