The consolations of philosophy ...

... or the lack thereof: Stabs in the Dark.

Well, one of the things I got from my Catholic upbringing is that life is, among other things, a preparation for death. I find I often skip to the end of a biography to see how the hero has met his end. But then, when reading a collected poems, I often read the last ones first, and composers' late music is often more interesting than their youthful works. "In my end is my beginning."

See also the post elberry links to here: superb and obscure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)