Character deaths being permanent, not for any great cause, and, most importantly, without any heavenly afterlife to live afterward, is such a personal thing to me. They're gone. Never coming back in any way, shape, or form. The world is one person emptier without them, and their loved ones must grow around the hole they left. They can't cling to the idea that the deceased is waiting for them or in a better place. That person is truly, irreversibly, dead. A wound that scars everyone who loved them. A scar that shapes them, guides them, and ultimately lives with them until it is just part of their skin alongside the nicks and pockmarks of life.