Life & Death- Some Thoughts on a Short Story

NOTE: I will be referring to the short story primarily unless otherwise stated.
I just read "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. At only 60-odd pages, it is beautiful and profound, so I absolutely recommend giving it a read (best done in one sitting or one day). I have read and watched a few other pieces about this story and the author, and I find the movie to be highly neat (private joke, don’t ask). However, after digesting the story, I find myself with a particular interpretation I have not seen elsewhere. I would be happy to hear from others that took away from it something like what I have.
    I feel as though the entirety of Dr. Louise Banks’ journey can be seen as an allegory for the way we all must deal with death. This point is where I recommend you click away and read the story for yourself, watch the movie Arrival (2016), then come back and actually understand what I will be spoiling. Anyway, throughout the story, we are gradually shown that the narration we are receiving is not Dr. Banks looking back, but her looking forward to events that have not yet occurred, which she can see with complete accuracy.
    By the point from which we receive the narration, it is implied that Dr. Banks can see (and in some way experience) essentially her entire life with uncanny detail. This presumably includes many painful things, like her own death, medical troubles, or bad financial decisions. However, we are being told the "Story of Your Life", which refers to Dr. Banks' daughter. Through the eyes of a mother, we see minor troubles and tribulations, along with moments of tenderness and triumph. Dr. Banks’ perspective is a lovely window into a family that could seem normal in another context.
    Normal, if tragic. Dr. Banks’ daughter dies tragically at the age of 25 in an incident that her mother was aware of before she was even born. Without the given context about the way Chiang interprets knowledge of the future, one can be forgiven for seeing our narrator as somewhat of a monster. She knows, for a fact, that she will outlive her child by decades, and yet does nothing to prevent that death? How cruel and uncaring she must be. However, the reality is quite the opposite, as she must bear the burden both of knowing she will lose her child and also of losing that child. Awareness of the future, even with total clarity, does not allow Dr. Banks to circumvent what will happen. It only informs her of the results of the actions that she must take; since taking actions otherwise would negate her knowledge.
    If seeing the future is akin to a person reading the script to reality, and they can only perform that script as writ, then Ted Chaing makes Dr. Banks’ daughter’s death a knowable certainty, along with all of the other events of her child’s life. In this interpretation of the flow of the future, events don’t lose value if you know they will happen. It is the moments themselves that have value, the time shared and the emotions felt. Any life lived is worth it, even if it ends in tragedy. We feel especially bad in the case of Dr. Banks' daughter because she died so young, but we must ask ourselves why the fact of her death is seemingly so important.
    Dr. Banks knowing that her daughter will die is not a revelation, only the details make it so terrible. Just like Dr. Banks and her daughter, we are all mortal and will die someday. For some it will be tragic, for others it will not be. Coming to terms with the reality that we will all die someday is hard for many, myself included. "Story of Your Life" is one of the most effective narratives I have read on the topic of a person’s meaning and death, imparting the fact and unavoidability of death, while simultaneously being deeply empathetic with the pain of that loss of the future.

    ​This story tells me that even though I know I will die someday and that I will forever be lost to the world, having only the blink of an eye to experience all that life offers, I still matter(ed), I still had value, I was and am loved, and that those things carry deep importance, even if they are fleeting.