For the child you lost, the parent you grieve, the friend taken in so untimely a death, are gone forever - never to be seen, never to live again. For the downward trend is inevitable. The great wheel of universal life is slowly grinding to a halt. The spring on the cosmic clock is slowly unwinding. Pollution is increasing.
Human problems intensify.
We seem destined to face the end with not a bang, as the poet said, but a pathetic whimper. Very, very real. And so there doesn't have to be the sense of despair, the ever-growing burden of guilt. Life isn't one horribly large tragedy, or a great exercise in pessimism. Jesus has wrestled death and sin and Satan to the ground.