When I was young I learned about the Dodo bird. It was comical and extinct. I didn't really understand the implications of that. I was so enthused by stories of the supernatural. Stories of dinosaurs in lost worlds and exotic creatures and places that man had not yet found. Eventually I was able to comprehend the more practical implications of extinction and it filled me with a sense of enormous loss. Extinction is forever. A yawning gaping hole inside me that threatened to swallow me whole.
It was too much to bear and it was with great relief that I accepted something very beautiful about the nature of time. Everything passes, but the concept of "now" is only really of importance to those experiencing it. In a top down view everything that has existed is just as important and locked in time as everything that is yet to come.
Like a crystal growing. If a flaw appears it will grow for a while and then resolve. This flaw is locked in the crystal. If a creature could only see a slice of that crystal it doesn't stop the fact that the flaw exists in another part of the crystal. The universe is a lovely static phenomenon if looked at in a four dimensional space and I take great consolation from that.
Though I suspect the Dodo does not.