The Washington Post’s chief arts critic, Philip Kennicott, is publishing a memoir that looks at the connection between mourning and music, based on his experience following the death of his mother. The Post published an excerpt of the book in the Sunday, Feb. 16 edition. I won’t get into the music aspect of Kennicott’s piece, but he said something that hit home to me. He noted that his mother was unhappy throughout her life, and he wondered what her final cogent moments were like – was she relieved to be dying and to be separated from her sadness? Was she terrified to think there was no afterlife (she was an ardent atheist) or at peace to think that there was about to be a silent nothingness? Did she reflect on what could have been? We will all face a day of reckoning, when we will ask ourselves many of the same questions as Kennicott supposed his mother asked. When my mother died last Thanksgiving, I too wondered what her last thoughts were. Was she looking forward to r