Even those who live well and long suffer unspeakable heartbreaks. They are not immune from the betrayal of friends, of family. Or violence from those who would take advantage of their diminished capacities. Or disease that seizes its own brief life from the vulnerability of age itself. To our horror, we watch cherished men and women ravaged by cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's.
Sentiment guards no one.
Those we love best are caught up in a world that is a death machine, which spawns its profligate generations without care or concern. The generating itself is characterized by waste, millions of seeds for one life. Civilizations are built as protection against the universe's inevitabilities. They are long holding actions, which themselves, for all their magnificence, finally blow to the winds. Walls lost under desert to no purpose other than archeological speculation.