Sunrise restaurant

I finally mustered up the courage to climb to the very top of the hill! Maybe if I keep going up there, my fear of heights will finally dissipate.

This made me think of Joshua. He was trying to come up with a list of things I should do to overcome my shyness and fear of heights. Sometimes I wonder about him and Sarah. Where are they right now? Are they even around, conscious of what's happening right now, or did their souls slip away into oblivion the second they died? Is there even an afterlife? Are the dead just being kept alive through our memories, or are they actually among us? How long does one actually remain conscious, even after death?

I remember when Sarah passed away, I couldn't help but imagine her all better and healthy again. I imagined her standing in the kitchen, telling me about the ordeal that led to her death just as casually as how she'd talk about a bad experience at the supermarket earlier in the afternoon. "I lost a lot of weight," she'd say. "I became too weak to walk, then my eyes stopped working, and then my brain... then I died. It was awful! I'm glad it's over. Anyway, would you like some bread with hummus?"

I had a lot of morbid questions for her, but most of all, I wanted to know how it felt to die. That one little moment between being alive and being dead -- did she know it was coming? Was it painful? What did she see? What did she hear? What was she thinking? Was she scared? Relieved? Was it like falling asleep? In that little moment, which was only a fraction of a second, did she already see where she was going -- whether she would remain among us or actually die right there and then?

I won't know any of the answers until I encounter that moment myself. Maybe I will never know -- maybe I'll be dead before I realize anything.