How can you call it abandoning when we literally know nothing about it other than that Nora wasn't at the funeral? For all we know, Matt told her that he didn't want her to watch him die, and that their reunion and common ground struck before the machine was how he wanted her to remember him. As for not going to the funeral, again, that is human behavior that doesn't need to be linked to abandonment in any manner. Perhaps it was simply too hard for Nora to take, to lose her absolute last remaining family member. I took their final scene as them saying goodbye, regardless of the machine's outcome.
For starters, I don't believe she shut off her feelings. Quite the opposite - she likely suffered worse than anyone living alone halfway across the world. Laurie is her therapist - there's nothing strange about keeping in contact with her, plus it had the added benefit of allowing her to keep tabs on what was going on in Jarden.
There are a couple easy reasons I can think of. First would be straight up fear. Nora thinks these people are getting incinerated. It's one thing to think that and sign up for it, but it's another thing altogether to be sitting there waiting on your imminent death. The second is also fear.....fear of the machine actually working and having to face her family and all the myriad of unknowns that come with that. Will they still be kids? Will they have moved on? Will they know who I am?
In Nora and Kevin's final discussion, Kevin told her basically to fuck off and die. Their relationship was highly toxic at that point. Even if you want to be together, relationships don't work that way. You can't just hand wave away all the awful things you've said to each other and the hurt you've caused each other. People need time and space. And at some point, after a couple years and thousands of miles apart, she has to assume that he's moved on, even if she still holds the candle. What triggers her now is Kevin literally showing up on her doorstep and professing that he's been searching for her for all these years.
Maybe the story is for her and not for Kevin at all? A way for her to feel, even if it's a figment of her imagination, that her kids are healthy and happy and doing alright on the other side. That liberates her and frees her of the guilt she's carried around for years. It's a coping mechanism so that she can move on and try to live a full life. Otherwise she'll spend the rest of her life as she has spent the past X number of years, in agony.
That is the creative process. No show is static and set in stone. And if they were, they likely wouldn't be any good. Every show in history, despite the intentions of the writers, is subject to the thoughts, feelings, emotions of not only the creative staff, but of the audience and critics. Things have to be dynamic for this reason. If something isn't working, then you change it. If a character isn't working, you write them out. Look at Lost for a Lindelof example. They introduced Nikki and Paulo and killed them off within 6 episodes. That is the kind of course correction that all shows go with. Think of how many hundreds of shows have killed off a character but found a loophole by which to bring them back. Happens all the time.
What does it matter? The golden rule of television is if you don't see a character die, then they are never truly dead. I think it would be far more stubborn to keep Laurie committing suicide in there if you realized it wasn't the way you wanted to go and had a chance to change it. They had that chance and took it. Shows take that kind of creative liberty all the time. Lindelof felt it was stronger to keep her alive in the end. You can hate the choice, of course, but he was absolutely entitled to it.
I can only speak for myself, but the entire series, let alone the finale, struck a deep emotional chord with me and it absolutely delivered.
And for the record I believe Nora was telling the truth.
