What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth.

Maybe the point is their memories-all that they take away with them. But it has occurred to me, on occasion, that our memories of our loved ones might not be the point. Whitshank,” he said, “and therefore I don’t have the memories that the rest of you have. “At the end of the piece, Reverend Alban rose and approached the lectern again. ‘That’s what my experience has been,’ they say, and it gets folded in with the others-one more report on what living felt like. The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. The hardware store their father owned with the cat asleep on the grass seed, and the friend they used to laugh with till the tears streamed down their cheeks, and the Saturdays when their grandchildren sat next to them gluing Popsicle sticks. “But it has occurred to me, on occasion, that our memories of our loved ones might not be the point.

A spool of blue thread goodreads