'the land now being lost forever'

"...it was customary, in a home where there had been a death, to drape black mourning ribbons over all the mirrors
and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruit of the field, so that the soul, as it left the body, would not
be distracted on it's final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land now being lost forever."

from W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn