What happens when things end, especially relationships? This usually refers to breakups that, by definition, shatter a once precious connection. Think of a chasm and a broken heart at its bottom.

Julian Barnes knows what loss feels like. His wife of 30 years, Pat Kavenaugh, died in 2008 from an aggressive form of brain cancer. There were 37 days between her diagnosis and her death.

The author found his wife’s approach to her demise both stoic and graceful, “never angry or cross.”

The writer described the depression that followed in a recent interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.”

It was like being caught in an avelanch. Every day it became worse. It was the most appauling thing that happened in my life and the blackest, the thing that deprived you of hope and balance. It took me years to get over it.

Barnes recalled that he considered killing himself if the grief didn’t stop. A few weeks after his wife’s passing, he found himself thinking of taking his life as he walked on a familiar path home.

I looked across the curb on the other side of the road … and I thought I can kill myself … that’s permissible. It’s not unforgiveble in my morality. I’m extremely unhappy, I’m bereft, though I have many friends. And I think I said, or a friend said to me: give it two years and, ok, I’ll give it two years.

But before that two year period elapsed I discovered why I couldn’t kill myself: I wasn’t allowed to kill myself. And that’s because I was the best rememberer of my wife. I knew her and I had celebrated her in all her forms and all her nature, and I had loved her deeply. And I had realized that if I had killed myself then, in a way, I’d be killing her, too.

I’d be killing the best memories of her, they would disappear from the world, and I wouldn’t allow myself to do that. And at that point (my thought of killing myself) just turned on its head and I knew I would have to live with the grief a long, long time, but I didn’t think an answer to the grief was killing myself.

The writer has never believed in God, nor does he hold the idea of being reunited with his wife in heaven. His view of human existence is that “life is not a short walk across an open field. There is always something waiting for you, coming out of a hedgerow at you.” His writing has long dealt with endings.

Mr. Barnes continues to write and is a much-celebrated, award-winning, prolific author.

Six years ago, however, he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. It is treatable and, with continued daily medication, he is not likely to die from this condition.

His continuation of life, as he describes it, is a form of responsibility. He did not want the thoughts and stories and fullness of his wife to vanish because of his own suicide. Nor, it seems, to dispense with his meaningful affection for her and remembrance of her.

Were we to follow his example, we would all keep photos and movies, enjoy mentioning the departed with those we know, and share our memories. I have friends who have written their own biographies using StoryWorth to leave an account of their lives for those who care about them.

Indeed, I have completed such a memoir myself, including advice that it will be more than proper for them to laugh about me once I am gone.

We don’t want to be forgotten, do we?

But while we live, we should “live” with all the strength, joy, and kindness we can muster, as demonstrated by Julian Barnes getting married again a few months ago, 17 years after his loss of Pat Kavanaugh.

What a marvelous thing it must have been for him to marry again, at 80.

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The first photo is of Julian Barnes at Headred, 2018, Estonia. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons and is the work of WanderingTrad. Next comes a picture of Pat Kavanagh, an image from the Evening Standard. Finally, Barnes, with his second wife, Rachel Cugnoni, sourced from the Telegraph.