Learned early

As a young man, Rico used to write poetry. (No, really, it's true.) Not great poetry, but poetry nonetheless.
Having recently recovered some of those ancient writings, this one was obviously of interest:

It was on the beach that I discovered how death will be.
It will be reclining into a dune covered with zipper-edged grass;
grass; tall and paperthin and dry; rustling softly and almost forlornly in the cool of the east wind with the sky clouded in soft cool threatening gray and yet warm and somewhat comforting (light bubbles of thinner mist trailing by, winking softly... seductively... like an old lover through a window or over a bedsheet rosy with morning)
closing round blotting out any hint of the black frightening eternity of space and defining a comforting cell, yet stretching away to distanceless borders on either side (with the distant throaty chuckling of the gulls echoing softly on the wind).
But then life calls; a high and shrill whistle and death rises and shambles gently through the viscous sand towards the living
slowly discarding layers of the tomb at each pace until the once (and yet again) living body regains the world of light and shadow.

Life is a grand celebration in honor of those who have passed on and can no longer share the feast with us.

But death (as close as I got, anyway) was just blackness and silence. If there is anything 'on the other side', Rico says he got no hint of it...