Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead?

Dead astronauts were no different than living astronauts. Neither could shed their skin. Neither could ever become part of what they journeyed through. Suits were premade coffins. Space was the grave. Better to think of yourself as dead already. There was freedom in that; liberated the mind to roam quadrants farther than the body.

Do you understand? Nothing thrives without being broken. Nothing exists without being dead first.

What is too much to bear? Not being alive is too much to bear.