Above you mentioned a natural and sometimes tragic order to things. I believe, based on my life experiences, physical and metaphysical, that the span of each incarnation is predetermined but how we live and how we die may be greatly affected by free will, and that various entities, call them guardian angels if you will, intervene through various means to prevent an exit earlier than contracted. Thus, he survived the stranding but not whatever happened later.

Here are a couple of tanka I wrote a few years ago, one of the unbroken line variety, and one 5/7/5/7/7:

Exit-date illusion souls do not dissipate still leaving all-too-real for somnambulists yet waking won’t salve grieving hearts

Deaths’ facts differ still
Will drives lives’ paths to deaths’ dates
Love burns — searing pain
Deepest loss most room for gain
Endless pain, Light fills the drain