There is a figure that shows up every New Year in cartoons and cultural shorthand — a skeletal specter in a black robe, scythe in hand, coming to collect. We absorb that image early and carry it quietly through our lives. It shapes how we think about death: as a thief, a punishment, an ending. But that image is wrong. Not metaphorically wrong — factually wrong about what actually happens at the threshold between this life and the next.