My Name is Memory

by Ann Brashares

I can tell you the feeling of dying into a community of souls. It’s when you understand you are no longer alive but you feel other beings around you, and it is profoundly comforting. People you might have known to some degree or other, who know and care about you, are with you. You don’t talk to them or communicate in any explicit way, but you know you are not alone and that they will somehow keep you. You aren’t capable of asking questions in this state, but there is a condition of knowing. I also know the feeling of dying into emptiness. We all die alone, but this is different. You apprehend nothing and nothingness. You have the sense of wandering, and it can go on for a very long time. You find yourself yearning, almost hungering, for the presence of another being. There’s a pattern in it. Your death is the shadow of your life. If you have strong and loving attachments in your life, you will cohere to your community of souls. You will probably come back to life quickly and among your own people. Your lives will occur in clusters geographically and ethnically. When you go to a new place, you’ll often migrate among your loved ones. If your community is ethnically mixed, you’re more likely to change race, and if not you probably won’t.

Life and death

I don’t know about heaven and hell, and I haven’t met God yet. But I have to admire the design.

God

“At the worst possible moment, the most painful, darkest moment when you can’t take it anymore and you are afraid, that is when a feeling of peace and comfort will come over you, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt.”

Death