Caveat:

Given that we are all material, tangible beings, it is difficult for us to grasp what is not. The nature of souls, God, and the afterlife—these subjects confound us, and rightly so. Encased in bodies of marrow and tendons, we can no more imagine things invisible than a deaf man can perceive sound; but those bodies, the ones that live and breathe and die, are not all there is to us. Rather, we are amphibians, possessing live-breathe-die bodies while being indwelt with souls, and we do have an inkling of the immaterial. We do, after all, have "eternity on our hearts."

Pain, sharp and consuming, stabbing through my limbs. Warmth leaking out my fingers, my toes. Light fading, fading, fading into dim nothingness, till all I can see is black. My spirit floating, soaring above the hats of the stars, coalescing to a place of smoking wisps and all that is ethereal.

This…this wasn't what I thought it'd be like. Wasn't how I had dreamt it, or how others had. Nowhere in my wildest imaginations had I thought that I would simply be snatched away, leaving my body—corporeal and living and then dying—behind in a frigid hospital room, the shapes of my friends bent over me as their eyes form rivers.

This wasn't how I thought it would end.

Yet I know it was more than that, so much so. It has a label, a name to be lost in. Can be pinned under a finger, held there for me to see. For all to see, though their gazes are shrouded with warm, salty pain.

This…this was how I died.

I can see that now, floating in this place of both contentment and longing, satisfaction and ravenous appetite. I can see my body, still full and bloated from the time my womb was brimming with hope, lying there. Just…there. No longer living, animated with the light of a soul, but just existing. Groaning, inwardly, wanting for all the world to be joined with something beyond matter, beyond the reaches of time or memory or space.

I can see my loved ones, spread out across the galaxy, beginning to weep as the news of my death reaches their ears. They think of my body, I suppose, what they think is still overflowing with two moving, wanting things; and they remember-and they inexplicably know- that I am not there. Not anymore. I simply hang here, suspended, waiting for death to meet with all whom I loved.

Reaper, the one who oversees this half-way world, tells me that I can go back if I wish. I can return, wafting through the oxygen of countless worlds beside those I love, and I can touch them. Connect with them, outstretch my hands to theirs…but I cannot feel them. And they…they cannot feel me, can sense my touch no more than the caress of a ghost. Because that's exactly what I am: half a being, living but no quite, echoing a person yet not embodying her.

I tried to go back, once. I shot down from this place of hints and whispers, wafting by the places I knew in life…and realized I didn't belong. That this world of palpable beings and palpable places and palpable things wasn't designed for someone like me, a mere finger of smoke twisting in bluish ringlets. No. No, I wasn't made for here, either; and I doubt anyone really is, when it's all said and done. We were made, we creatures of muscle and skin, of marrow and bone…we were made for some place different. Otherworldly.

You might ask how I know this, too. Which is a reasonable question, I guess—after all, I'm merely an apparition, a part-way thing that wishes to be united with that which will never rot but does for now. I shouldn't know things, shouldn't be grasping, grasping, grasping them like regular beings. Like decomposing canvases of meat and skin. Yet somehow—in a miracle, in a glimpse of reality, in a miracle-reality—I do.

Because I can still see, me, this phantasm without eyes or a face. I see constantly, gaze hovering over my echo-loves, yearning to simply touch. To embrace and engulf them with myself, but knowing they could never hold me in return.

I see…and I see much.

I see my friends, the ones who were witnesses to my death, my passing, my slipping away from my body. They are broken, rattled creatures, reeling from something beyond their understanding. Their noses are red, raw from incessant wiping, and their eyes pour liquid grief, tears rolling down cheeks that are still painfully alive. Still feeling as tiny, infant fingers reach to brush their skin-hide-tents.

I see my family, who cannot grasp that I am truly gone. And why should they? They have seen my body, with its indelible ice and womb they believe to be full, and they've marched beside it as my funeral procession crawled on. They have witnessed four elegant, svelte beasts pull my casket along stone pavement, hooves clip-cloping in tune with the thunder above; and they have seen me swallowed up by the ground. Gulped down ravenously, tucked into a gluttonous stomach where all-too many have been laid.

And I see him. A shredded, mangled man who has been distorted beyond recognition. Who's shrouded in a black mask and a black cape and a black soul, his only voice emanating from a device—a machine—planted in his throat. Whose only breathe comes from a set of artificial lungs, his chest hissing with wraithlike whispers, and whose tear ducts have long been scorched by fire unquenchable.

Otherwise, he would be crying over my body, over that place in the ground where I was wolfed down. He would be shedding tears, those rivers of pain that sing melodies deeper than mere words ever could. And he…he would be weeping. Weeping, weeping, weeping…for me.

But not simply for me. For my body, lying cold and rigid under the elements from which we are wrought. For my soul, which has fluttered away, caught up to some new, fathomless world. For separateness of my body and soul, the tearing of what should be whole but isn't, and for the faint hope that they may one day be reunited.

These things—these are what I see. What I watch, with eyes that are not eyes. And what I've glimpse with these not-eyes, these fakes that merely suggest and allude, tells me that death isn't right. That we were, long ago, made to be live on, to endure longer than even the stars.

We were never made to die.

And yet we are. We are born, we live, breathe, eat. Then we die. We…die, leave behind our bodies—the universe—to dissolve while we linger on, yearning to embody. To fill, and be filled.

But the question remains: is this it? Will I forever remain this way, drifting through blissful nothingness? Will I dither about the beyond-cosmos, eternally unattached to the physical realm? Or will I one day be set free, watch my body rise out of the earth, as immortal and timeless as my soul?

Yes. Yes, I think I will meet my body someday, be joined to it as a bride to a groom and a groom to a bride. I'll embody once more, will fill and be filled. My fingers, my toes…one day they will be able to touch, to connect with the earthly worlds. Because then, everything will be as I am now—immortal, otherworldly—and I…I will be worldly as well. Spiritual, humming with the inward light of a soul, yet having a physical body that can never die.

So you could still say this isn't how I thought things would end. You can. After all, things don't really come to an end—not forever, anyway.

This…this is only the beginning.