Cheers!... 
to the characters who live in the worlds of our imaginations! 
I had never considered their life after I move on but it is a "most interesting concept" to examine as part of who I am as a writer. Knowing our characters as only we can, the act of writing about them does give them a more enduring life span than even our own. What a bitter sweet realization for this writer. We mature as we write and henceforth our writing grows with us also maturing until it is ready to travel the world on its own path through time. 
Like our children, we watch our characters grow, taking form and becoming almost independent of us, their creator. Yet these beings unique to just our minds, once built with words, then become like our children. A part of ourselves that we send out into the world's garden to live on even after we are gone. Ah, the one true dream of this writer is defined by this statement: 
"I want my works to be famous, not myself, so that it may survive me." 
O.G. Tomes