Is The End Just a New Beginning?

The theme of death is present in a great many books, including Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. I personally find this theme a bit frightening. Some people say that death is the end, that there exists nothing after it, that time stops. Others choose to believe that death is a new beginning, perhaps to another life, either here or in another realm. I believe in the idea of reincarnation. But at some point, I start to think that all these explanations of life after death are made simply to minimize the fear of death. In the book, Mrs. Dalloway, one of the characters, Septimus, a World War I veteran, commits suicide. During his time in the War, he had felt great loss, including the death of his friend. He is suffering from a form of post-traumatic-stress disorder, and as a result, no longer feels a part of this world. He is losing touch with reality and so chooses to end his life. I find this whole scene quite frighting, that events in one's life such as a war could have such devilish effects on the mind. However, when I think about it, the fact that Septimus had this disorder after the war is not very surprising at all.

I have been brought up believing that any form of killing is bad, no matter in what situation, that it is a move against nature to harm the soul of another creature. Now, imagine that this is what you have believed your entire life. Suddenly, you are drafted into the military, against your will. You must go to fight an enemy that you do not know, in a world you are unfamiliar with. All that you do know is the person next to you. However, nothing is constant. Your world is shaken out of balance. The people next to you die, or are injured and replaced with new recruits, who also die or get injured. The only constant is within yourself. You run around, diving into holes and behind walls for your life, and as you do, you realize that you are standing on a column sticking out of the pit of hell, and a single wrong move in either direction will lead to a long fall into a bottomless pit. This is how I feel Septimus's mental state was after the war. I think it is truly horrible to have to think like this, because just writing it down made me feel very uncomfortable. To have to live through it is another task entirely.