The corpse swaying to and fro in the minibus was the only truth he had left. He still thought of it as a real person, a collection of tangible, worldly sensations: it could do things; it wasn’t just a gelatinous lump. It had a family, and that family still had a long way to go, and on the journey maybe they might even talk like real siblings again.

Modern Western culture conditions us to step away from that precipice as quickly as possible. We are conditioned to see death and painful longing as problems to be solved rather than as sacred landscapes to be revered.