Impermanence

Impermanence. How the state we are in is not continuous. How our conception of who we believe we are, is fraught with misconception.
  1. Death is permanent
  2. The time of our death is unknown.
These are two facts, undeniable facts, facts that can not be denied. They are, along with our birth, the truths which can not be ignored and if we were to use our mind genuinely to consider what is important, then our death has to be as important as anything we do in our life.
We are absorbed by the factors that surround us in our daily experience. The good experiences and the bad ones are the factors that grasp our attention, they form our thoughts and our conversation, they are what we conceive we are, what we have become used to in believing who we are. And yet death tells us that our importance in the face of death is a much more important factor than all these occurrences.
If death is so important why don't we give death more consideration during the time we are alive. Why do we not, as we develop a love of ourselves, the notion that as much as we are in love with the things we do and the love we have of ourselves for doing them, they are all impermanent and death makes a mockery of our sacrifice to them.
The recognition that we die raises a profound conundrum. How can a life full of enriching experiences, full of learning, full of loving and caring come to an end on the buffer of death. What has been the purpose, is there a purpose or has it been simply a cultural practice.
Man has found these questions impossible to live with without offering an alternative.
"The end" without the possibility of rebirth in some form or another is pretty stark and mankind has struggled with death for as long as contemplative thought has been around. 

The thoughts at death as we pass out of this world must be immensely important in so far as our previous life is concerned, not in so far as how others see us but in our achieving an easy exit (if there is such a thing). Our living mind as we slip away should have had a 'tutorial' on what this moment is likely to be like so that the presentation of death is not one of fear but one of reflected peace.