I Think It Died

I think my plant died.

Not as in "I killed this plant" but rather, I think this plant maybe got to end of its life cycle and died. 

So I think this plant was an umbrella plant.  I've had it for a long while.  It drops leaves fairly often and so the bottom portion of it is bare and it is tall and lanky but still growing and putting out new leaves.

When I went to water last week it had all shrivelled/dried up.  Like completely and suddenly.  I have never seen this reaction from a plant before.  But I thought maybe I under watered it and so I gave it a solid bottom soak watering and hoped for the best but nothing changed.  All of the leaves were still horribly withered and wilted.  

So I cut it all the way back (this has helped some of my lanky plants before) and when I did that the main stem was completely dead and dried up.  Which is when I started to think I hadn't over or under watered this poor thing and it had just gotten to the end of its life.

I wonder if maybe someone better with plants than I am (I'm looking at you, plant influencers!) could have checked something sooner or noticed something sooner and when I finally give up on the "pretty sure it's dead" stem that I'm still half praying might show signs of life, I will take a look at the roots, not that I'll understand whatever it is they have to tell me.

But yeah, I think maybe this plant just ran into the end of its life cycle.  Still a bummer and a loss either way, especially since I sort of half imagine that house plants can just live forever.