Life, Death, and Change

We do something strange at funerals—we behave as if the dead were sainted, as if being dead makes them a good person no matter how they were in life. If we speak their names, we speak of them as if they had become better.

There are a lot of realms in the invisible, of which death has many. The times I have visited, I have seen innumerable spirits, standing pressed cheek-to-cheek, eyes dully fixed on nothing, waiting for Baron and his wife to birth them back into life or for something better to happen.

I speak of being alive as if it is a classroom, and it is. You change in life. You do not change in death. Not every life is lived corporeally. Not every life is lived in a body, in this physical place.

But it is worth remembering when you call on your ancestors that the dead do not change, by themselves. Often as not, they resist change.

Be very careful taking their advice.