Last week, I attended a funeral. It was the funeral of a young man from our cultural community. During the eulogy, one of his relatives spoke emotionally about a European trip they had planned together - a journey that will now remain unfinished.

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That stayed with me.

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For much of my life, I believed that most things should have a beginning and an ending. Without an ending, something felt incomplete. A relationship should not end abruptly without closure. A project should have a beginning, a process, and a conclusion. Even painful chapters of life, I assumed, needed to be properly resolved.

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Perhaps that belief gave me a sense of order. If something could be completed, explained, or settled, then maybe it could finally be put away.

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But life does not always give us that kind of ending.

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We wish someone had apologized for the hurt they caused us.

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We wish we could say sorry for something we did years ago.

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We wish we had one more conversation, one more opportunity to explain, forgive, understand, or simply say goodbye.

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And sometimes none of that happens.

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The funeral made me think about the unfinished things I carry in my own life. Things I once assumed would eventually be resolved. Questions I thought would someday be answered. Conversations I imagined I might still have.

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Some may never happen.

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I am beginning to wonder whether life asks something different of us.

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Life is not a project. It does not always follow a strategy or move toward a predictable outcome. There are no guarantees that every story will be completed, every wound explained, or every relationship neatly resolved.

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Perhaps peace does not always come from closure.

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Sometimes it may come from learning to live gently beside what remains unfinished.

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Not everything has to be resolved before life can move forward. Some unfinished stories may simply become part of who we are.

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And perhaps the question is no longer, How do I bring this to closure?

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Perhaps it is, Can I still live fully, even if it never closes?

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