I always imagined an embargo with Death. As people prepare to take off with him in the form of souls, he grabs their wrist and leads them to a door, but they stand there in the nothingness a moment longer. He feels them pull back ever so slightly — enough to feel the tension — and turns around to face them. The soul is not looking at Death. The soul is looking back through the veil, back into the realm of fleeting love, of abandoned family, seeing it as close as they will for what may be eternity. In that moment, I imagine Death wearing a tailored suit to fit a long torso and long, slender legs. His scythe is not a scythe, but a pocket watch on a chain. His feet are adorned with the finest wingtip Oxford shoes that click as he walks, echoing into forever. The soul looks down, staring into the blackest black, suspended and at the same time feeling impossibly heavy. The only light is the window back into the existence, getting smaller and smaller with each passing second. Or is it hour?

Please.

The word feels small and impossible. It seems to be absorbed by the surrounding blackness. Death turns his head back around once more; he knows what the soul will ask before they can release another imploring whisper into the air. He releases his grasp on their delicate wrist, and places his open palm onto their forehead. A cold rush is pushed through the soul, as a piece of them drifts back into the closing plane of life, to remain with the mortal. The piece of soul — that energy — is then imprinted into and intertwined with one of the living, allowing a slice of the deceased to communicate and visit the loved one while they sleep.

When I fall asleep, and she’s there, I find myself unable to ask the questions I longed to ask for years and years. I lose my words from over-excitement of smelling her perfume or feeling her hair on my neck when she hugs me. Even when the dreams fall incoherent, and I lose control, and they begin to spiral into a disarray of images and colors and I can no longer tell what way is forward, I still smell her perfume. I imagine Death watching over from some distant place, calling the shots as to when the dream will end, controlling the time we spend together. Not too much, as he twists his hand and pulls her out of my head. He takes his pocket watch out of his suit jacket and double checks that he’s still running time, and he studies my lost, subconscious soul and smirks to know he can decide how long I get with her. And he knows I won’t complain, because any second longer I have with my mother is more than I could imagine after watching her die that day. After watching her breath escape her, and she was led off into the darkness only to pull back, and look through back to the living, and back to life. Please. She watched my eyes scan her body for any type of movement while the rest of me remained as still as her. In that moment Death let go of her wrist, and pushed a piece of her into me, only to visit in dreams.