Death is the great interrupter. Death is the great interrupter because, far more often than not, it strikes when it’s least expected. When death comes it invariably interrupts plans, dreams, projects, goals. One author observes how very sad, how very pathetic it is, when a man dies suddenly and we go into his home or his place of business “and see the unfinished things he has left—a letter half written, a book half read, a picture begun but not completed. Life is full of mere fragments,” he observes. “Mere beginnings of things.”

One of my surreal memories from this last year is going into Nick’s dorm room a couple of days after his death. It gave every indication that he had expected to return. Books were laid waiting on his desk in preparation for final essays. Hebrew vocab was jotted all over his whiteboard in preparation for exams. Spreadsheets full of guest lists were open on his computer in preparation for his wedding. I’m sure he was as shocked as we were that all of these tasks would be left forever incomplete, that they would only ever be mere fragments, mere beginnings of things.

And it wasn’t


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