YOU: At first we talked about hospitals. It was like those awful parties where businessmen talk about their least favorite airports. But what we mostly discussed was what it was like to “pass over.” The fear, the pain, the exhilaration, the relief. We all needed to tell that tale, even though we were afraid we were full of cliches. It’s the dead person’s answer to the coming-out story.

ME: And how people treated you? Do you talk about that? Who loved you, who didn’t? Who was kind, who was cold?

YOU: There you go again. “What do the dead think of us?” The living are so biocentric.

ME: We think about you. We want to believe that you think about us. Even if you think about us badly.

YOU: The rules are like this: You have to think about us, but we don’t have to think about you.

ME: Hardly seems fair.
–Christopher Bram, Lives of the Circus Animals