#1 Do you still believe in an afterlife? If you do, has it changed in any way?

A) No

B) Well,

C) Yes, it's the same..

D) ..but it has changed. I want to wish for an afterlife filled with love. I hope to be sent somewhere kind and beautiful. I long for the sun on the snow and the red of berries growing on brambles. One with a glimmering ocean, one with air to breathe in. One with a soft blanket field of green.

E) "In heaven, there are no animals," they told me in the early spring. With a heavy heart, should it be right to tell a child to accept the fact that the small thing they loved before will never find another home, not even one in God's arms?

F) A handful of tears and a fistful of fresh geranium wasn't enough to bring anything back. Against the brick wall, I shoveled dirt. If you laid a dying hand upon fresh graves, could you still catch the dust in the air? And could you believe, even for a moment, and even just to soothe yourself, that the dust was the soul of something you loved?

G) "Nothing will ever truly die," is what they should have told me. If nothing dies, like how I want to think, then the little creature in my arms isn't dead either. It lives in the memory. It lingers there. 

H) My memory is heaven. It's the best kind. It has all that I love. Smiling teeth, the mud on my hands, the air in our lungs. My thoughts will breathe life back into you. Nothing truly dies, the same way ice is the color of water is the color of the sky. 

I) In the wooden booth I asked the curtain:

J) "Is there really an afterlife for us?"

K) "Why do we think we still deserve it?"

L) "And why are only those who can comprehend salvation allowed in?"