" Death makes us face up to our own mortality. When my father died and I was suddenly parentless, I felt pushed into the firing line. It was as if I’d been sitting in a trench all those years smoking my cigarettes and brewing tea in my billycan while everyone had been out there getting shot, and suddenly my officer had shouted: ‘OK, Ironside! Over the top!’ Now I was in no-parents’-land with snipers all around. I was next. We have to face the fact that we will die, that we will die alone. We have to face the truth that even with others we basically always are alone, and that unless we give it meaning, life is meaningless. "

― Virginia Ironside , 'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement