All of the meaning and wisdom derived from their lives was because they were alive. Now they aren't, and we don't get any more of their particular genius, and that is a damned shame.

It's also a damned shame that my grandfather, who is precisely nobody on the world stage, but still somebody, and currently in the hospital and I might get a text any minute saying he's dead, is on the brink of exiting the world, joining the hundred billion or so other humans who've ceased to exist for no good reason other than that the blind god Nature doesn't care about anything we care about. What Nature has ordained, she has ordained without reference to meaning or wisdom or the interests of those who live and die within her system, and we will be doing right when we remake her.