Well, I've been thinking about this for days:
When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me it still sometimes happens & ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I dont ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance
That pure chance could be so generous & so kind
That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time
That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & its much more meaningful
The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I dont think Ill ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
Ann Druyan, talking about her husband, Carl Sagan
And I'm probably just gonna keep thinking about it...