Last night, I had a dream, in which death was not what it seems. I saw a world in which the deceased, instead of diminishing completely at death, appeared to remain in some form within this reality plane. They could be seen, as they had been until the moment of death itself. They could be spoken to and heard, even touched and held, as if they had never left. Yet, this state of post-death non-being, this abstracted state of in-between, lasted only some time, maybe a few days or a week at most. After which, the deceased slowly faded away, not to be seen, heard or touched again. I received no indication, in my dream, as to the exact nature of what this phenomenon means. Was it that the deceased actually remained on earth, even in a physical form, for just a little longer? Or was it more likely that it was an edifice of their former being, created out of their memories that dwelled in the collective minds of those who knew them? Were these memories somehow ossified into existence, as ...