Confessions: I have no idea how to write endings

I write good beginnings: concise, to the point, and carefully adept and drawing the reader in. I have at least ten stories on my hard drive that consist of a great opening line and nothing else. Okay, maybe there's a larger problem there, like not having an actual story to hang that great opening line on, but when it comes to finishing one, I tend to stick to the Paul Valéry school of writing that says poems (in my case, short stories usually) are never finished, just abandoned. I abandon a lot.

I dug through the archives of Writer Unboxed, which is fast becoming my favorite online source for writing advice, and found a few good ideas for wrapping up a story (without that annoying little pink bow):

Authors often open with a dramatic event and end with a visual image. That’s fine but such choices don’t necessarily capture the feeling we have of arriving at defining moments in our lives. (May 01 2013 )

Actually, this is what I try to do a lot of the time: finish with a visual image, preferably one that brings  some sort of thematic closure.

...a good ending should: 

Tie up unanswered questions 

Show how your protagonists have changed 

Reward or punish your protagonists

Give the reader an emotional catharsis (note: this doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending, it means eliciting an emotional response–like tears or surprise or discomfort). (Aug. 27 2007) 

Reading this bit of advice, and the comments that followed it, I'm left asking myself if I'm not reading the right things. I'm okay with characters who don't learn or change. There's a quote I searching for here, something I read a while back about characters not having to change as long as the writer shows why they didn't change, but I think there's a school of writing that lets them bathe in their own pathos.

TW (Thinking Writer) wisely reminds us that the story is about getting people to understand a theme. Thus the ending should flow naturally from the theme. TW uses a couple film examples (boy, it’s great to read that M. Night Shyamalan had to write Sixth Sense 6 times). If a writer is having trouble with the ending, it’s probably because the theme isn’t developed enough. (May 09 2007 )

Maybe, maybe not, but I tend to be a little heavy-handed with theme to begin with. (And yeah, I'm aware it's a problem.) The greatest take away is that there are no hard, fast rules when it comes to writing endings, but there are things to be aware of. Do you have problems writing endings? And if so, how do you circumvent them?