Thank you for your response.
First, I will say "that would have been my answer a year ago" (but in extreme layman's terms.) And seeing at that no else has commented differently during the past two months, I will assume that it is still the consensus.
When I first read your response right after...
My understanding from reading about the big rip is that matter itself will be torn, aka ripped, apart in the very last moments of the universe's existence as the expansion of the fabric of space-time mega-accelerates in those last fractions of a second.
While the big rip is still a hypothesis...