Rite of passage …

… The Death of the Miraculous | An Answer Back. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… suffice it to say that when I state that the death of a human being is miraculous, I am not so unfeeling as to think that such an event could be regarded by those who have loved and cherished another, as anything approaching our common conception of ‘miracle’ and for those who are close to an individual who has passed, it is one of the few genuine calls to suffering, because to be separated from that which we love can be unbearable. By ‘miraculous’ I do not mean wonderful, expeditious to our ends, or pleasurable. It is the lot of our race to typically regard as miraculous only those things which both defy explanation and which also serve some purpose which we, in our limited understanding, can construe as beneficial to ourselves, either directly or by proxy. No, when I say ‘miraculous’ I intend the term with the full necessary and sufficient force with which it was born: an extraordinary event taken to manifest the supernatural power of God fulfilling his purposes (Webster’s Third International Dictionary). Something extraordinary. Something which makes apparent that there are forces at work which defy human explanation.