She was aware of trying to remember something extremely important that eluded her. She tried to remember, but there were distractions. Each distraction was a different voice calling, each with its own urgency. Slowly, she realized that each voice was a memory, and that what she was trying to remember was the self.

The pieces slowly came together. She remembered the pain. She remembered the white walls of the hospital. She remembered the man. The man was her husband. He was standing just outside the door. She was trying to call out to him. She remembered the children. She panicked. What would the children do?

After the pieces came together, she remembered the coming together as a kind of passage, a dark tunnel she was now past. While in it, it had seemed like eons, but now it was only a moment. But what was this place she was in now?

Perception was no longer tied to time or the senses. She was aware of other beings. She saw them not through the intermediary of reflected light, because each emanated its own light and its own colors. And then she realized that she was like them, that she was emanating her own light – no, that she was light.

Everything was light and dark, being and non-being, close when she focused, far away when she let it go. Time seemed like a book. She could flip pages forward, flip pages back, read indefinitely on the same page. Memories were like tidy packages of sight, sound, smell, touch, and emotion. She opened a package and was transported.

She opened them, one by one. This was when my mother gave me those red shoes for my sixth birthday. This was when my little brother John was born. This was my wedding. This was the first time I made love. This was when I gave birth to my first child, Helen. She relived the choices she had made, the longing, the fear, the pleasure, and the guilt. My first lie. My first love. My first sacrifice. She regretted them or savored them, but as much as she stretched her will out, she could not change them.

She was suddenly aware of the intrusion of an immense being of pure white light. It called her away from the memories, into some presence outside of time, outside of memory. The other beings faded into the distance. She was alone now, just she and it.

“It is time to move on,” it says.

“Where are we going?”

“You shall see.”

As she follows, it says, “No need to look back.” But she has already taken one last glance. They have left behind far below a great, shimmering gray globe. The shimmering is caused by the colored light beings, tiny now because they are so far away. There are many of them, and some are being greeted by the brilliant white beings and moving away, but others are sinking down into the gray, disappearing from her consciousness.

The memory packages were so vivid as she opened them, it was like reliving them. But now, as she follows this monstrous white light being, the memory packages become more tightly wrapped, they shrink until they are like a chain of opaque beads she wears around her neck but does not think about. But there’s one memory that remains: the children.

“I’m worried about the children,” she says, “especially the young ones, Ignatius and Anne…”

“That is not for you to be concerned about any more,” it says.

“Will I ever see them again?”

“Not on that side,” it replies.

It opens a door in the blackness, and they disappear through it.