on death and dying

Today, I had occasion to look up the five stages of dying.

I came across some words of Kubler-Ross's which, roughly paraphrased, were: know that everything has its purpose.

So I've been thinking about the puzzle pieces:
The mom. The dad. The brother. The grandmother.
The education.
The boys.
The good friends.
The not-so-good friends.
The job.
The apartment.
The cat.
The secrets.

What seems clear to me is that, yes, everything has its purpose, and that we can never know what that purpose truly is. To guess at the purpose of something seems as naive and facile as a child, watching television, who believes that the actors are small people in that particular box. It isn't our fault that we're infants, but it doesn't help us, either, to cling to wrong ideas and ways of thinking.