No matter how much we put it off, the bell will toll for each of us. How do we process that eternal human dilemma?

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

When I was 16, a good friend of my older brother was killed in a car accident. The vehicle he was driving had slid into a parked truck on a country road. Apparently, there was barely a mark on him, but he had hit his head in the wrong spot, and just like that, his life was extinguished. He was 18.

I remember my mother answering the phone call that conveyed that news and hearing her burst into tears. For about a year afterwards, whenever the phone rang in our house, I felt a surge of anxiety. Death had come near, and I found it profoundly shocking. Years later, and with a decades-old religious faith, I am only partially cured of the discomfort at the thought of death.