Everybody loves a metaphor comparing life to a play.   They ought to, anyway.  If it was good enough for Shakespeare . . . “Life’s but a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage . . .”

But what happens after the actor takes his last exit?

Life doesn’t just go on in the same old way, nor does time.  Death is more of a phase change than that.  It’s not just a marker.

Life is like a play on a stage where the actors are unaware, except by rumor, that they are acting in a play at all.

But when an actor takes his final exit, he finds himself in the audience, watching the curtain open, and watching himself walk on and utter his first line.