Hi, I'm FRANCIS ROSENFELD

Beliefs about the afterlife are as old as humanity, and of course, if someone were to ask Josepha, she could recount all the wonders and rewards of the blessed, if only to emphasize how unworthy and sure to be cast out someone like Cimmy was.

One had to work hard for one’s rewards, which were not likely to be bestowed on one, even by a higher power, without the approval of one’s elders, so now Cimmy hesitated contemplating the obvious thought, that she had passed and was now enjoying her great rewards, because, by all societal rules, she didn’t qualify for the privilege.

Truth be told, she never gave a lot of thought to thereafter, not many young people do, even in a village like hers, where tragedy visited often and took its share of lives indiscriminately, but she had been sure whatever awaited her on the other side must be modest and common, as was befitting her station.

She got scared to find herself surrounded by such unearthly beauty, thinking she might have trespassed into the forbidden garden area, and as exciting as that thought felt in the world of the living, she was sure the afterlife would not look kindly upon it.

Maybe it was all of her wanderings through the dream garden of her childhood that had brought her there, and she breathed a sigh of relief, reassured she was probably asleep.

“Cimmy! I was looking all over for you! Do you want to hear Bertha holler? You were going to meet with her to go over the crop rotations and she’s been waiting for you for over half an hour. Did you fall asleep in the flower garden again? You know she gets all weird every time she remembers she approved it: if you can’t eat it or wear it, what’s the point?”

‘What a strange dream I’m having, and Rahima is in it!’

“Cimmy, shake that dazed look off your face and go talk to Bertha before she blows her top!”

Cimmy frowned as she tried to get up from the bed of grass she’d been sleeping in, and noticed a scratch on her arm, which looked very much like the kind one would get in a lost battle with a thorny rose bush. The scratch stung a little, enough to make it clear to Cimmy that whatever this afterlife body was made of, it could still feel pain.

“I had the strangest dream!” She whispered in a daze.

“Considering the regular contents of your mind, that’s scary enough for me!” Rahima teased her. “Weirder than usual?”

“No. That’s just it: everything looked just like reality, just like here. In fact, I suppose it was here. I was right here, Rahima, seeing everything I see right now, except for this one rose bush. I think it scratched me, see?”

“So, what’s so strange about a rosebush?”

“The flowers were bright blue.”

“You know there are no such things as blue roses. Roses can’t be blue, Cimmy. They have the wrong pigment for it.”

“I know.”

“So, did you imagine them, then?”

“It felt so real: the sight, the scent, the touch of the petals. It felt absolutely real, Rahima, as real as you are now.”

“How do you know I’m real?” Rahima teased her again, but retreated quickly when she saw the terrified look in Cimmy’s eyes.

“Cimmy, it was just a dream! For crying out loud, here, take my hand. I’m as real as it gets.”

“So were the blue roses,” Cimmy uttered a tiny whisper.

“Ok, we’ll talk about this later. Obviously, you’re very shaken by this experience, but right now you have to go talk to Bertha before you’re even more shaken by her batting your ears.”

Cimmy attended her elder’s instruction, copiously seasoned with verbal discipline, as if from another world, taking in her surroundings, which were still unfamiliar to her, with bemused detachment: the grand hall with the heavy wood furniture, the bay windows overlooking the flower garden, the pond, with the skipping stones and the gazebo, all looking so much like her old dream she now had no doubt she had passed, and figured since she didn’t do enough to earn her blissful place in heaven, the perceived presence of Bertha must be her penance.

“Are you even listening to me, you useless airhead? What did I just say?”

“The onions should go into quadrant number three this year, to allow quadrant four to lie fallow and rest, since there are no other plantings planned there.”

Bertha stared her down intently, meant to say something, but sighed instead and dismissed her to her task.

The feeling that everything was surreal followed Cimmy around, like a sudden awakening, and all the strange events of her life, her skipping through reality and its unlikely details, Fay, the constant reshaping of her surroundings, all snapped into place to let her know she hadn’t been in the world of the living for a long time now, and whatever this place was, this illusion of life, was no more real than the blue roses.

“Cimmy,” Rahima whispered, careful not to further distress her friend, “are you alright?”

Cimmy looked at the face she knew so well, and could remember all the memories they’d made together, sharing sorrow, mischief and trust, but she also remembered that every time her reality shifted her friend didn’t seem to remember anything from their previous life.

It almost felt like an untold number of Rahimas lived in all these different worlds, all recognizable as herself, but with completely different pasts.

How can one love a person who isn’t real?

And yet, as she looked at the worry in Rahima’s eyes, she felt blessed by their years of friendship and the memories she had of her, memories maybe not shared by the latter, but real nevertheless.

Her world might have been nothing but, but the memories of it were real. Maybe that was all real was, just pictures of a pretend life we make up for ourselves in our own heads, but if that is all there is, then does it even matter, if we can’t shake our own illusion?

If it’s there, it’s real. It can’t get realer than that.

She could still hear Bertha’s familiar rant in her head.

Another memory, maybe another manufactured moment, who’s to say, which had lost all its emotional weight, like a picture you stared at for too long.

“Do you want to talk about the blue roses?” Rahima enticed.

She did! She wanted so much to talk about the blue roses; she wished she could share that feeling, but there weren’t any words for it, and it all sounded so banal in spoken form, so unworthy of wonder and awe.

“It was just a dream, it doesn’t matter,” she said in the end.

“Anyway, I’m glad to have you back. You scared me a little, you know? I’ve never seen you this unraveled. Whatever you do, don’t tell Bertha and Josepha. Can you even imagine what they would say about that?”

“Who cares what they would say about that?” Cimmy replied, her soul far away, already longing for the blue roses.

“Maybe I should stay with you for a few days,” Rahima’s eyed filled with worry again. “You know, you didn’t even ask about Fay. I’m seriously concerned for you, Cimmy.”

“I’m sure he’s around,” the latter smiled.

In all her falling through reality, Fay had been an unquestioned constant, and she didn’t doubt he was somewhere close by, ready to follow her in the next step of her journey, wherever that journey might lead.

Was there a point to this ever evolving experience?

She didn’t know, but she felt it in her gut that there was more to the story than what she could see and touch - meaning, purpose, direction, a path to follow, laid at her feet one stepping stone at a time - and maybe for the first time in her life she wondered whether there was something or someone out there, something much bigger than her, unbound by space, time and the fleeting illusion of materiality.

Strangely enough, after all these years of devoting herself to scientific discovery and to shattering unfounded convictions and passed down myths, she felt what it meant to have faith.

One thing was sure: they all loved her unconditionally, and it felt good to be so loved, even though she couldn't understand why.

The sun cast afternoon rays on the wall, making the golden patterns gleam. She followed their movement for a while, until she tired of them. Her vision was blurry and she looked at things as if through a veil; trying to focus on details required too much of her concentration.

The breeze blew in a heavenly fragrance and her whole being dwelled upon it for a while, breathing it in, filling her lungs with it. The fragrance soaked her in love and peace and made her happy.

She wished she could remember something, anything, from her forgotten life, and she tried to, scrunching her forehead really hard. Vague pictures sometimes came through, of places she couldn't recognize, or people she interacted with briefly, the image of a little dog, white and fluffy, and the sound of children laughing, but they were fleeting memories, like a cloud of butterflies touching the surface of a lake for only a moment.

A tall lady, all smiles, entered the room to bring fresh linen, glanced in her direction to see how she was doing, adjusted her blanket and left. The lady's scent lingered behind her for a while, enveloping Rosemary in its fresh chamomile and citrus aroma like in a warm embrace. There was also another scent mixed in, one that Rosemary couldn't identify, but which made her feel warm, nurtured and safe.

The tall lady had tried many times to figure out how to communicate with her, but unfortunately, Rosemary could only utter inarticulate sounds, even though she desperately wanted to join in the conversation. The fact that everybody was swarming around her, talking, moving things, opening and closing doors, without her being able to express any opinions about it unsettled her. She cried at times, and then everybody came in, all at once, smothering her in a sea of affection and comfort, but Rosemary only wanted the lights off, or felt a little thirsty, and it was so frustrating to watch them try to guess her need and attempt to accommodate it.

The sun set, painting the horizon in orange and violet hues, and then the sky grew darker, to Rosemary's dismay. She couldn't understand why the light dimmed around her, she didn't want it to dim, she liked the afternoon sunshine on her walls. Her eyes reached across the room, trying to grasp onto something that would relieve her anxiety, and her gaze rested on the plush dog. The realization that this object didn't belong to an old memory disappointed her.

She worried about the people who might have been in her life before, wondering if there was another tall lady somewhere, who missed her, and then figured out that as soon as she was able to communicate she would try to find that tall lady and let her know she was alright, that she lived with people who loved her dearly, and she would visit her when she could.

But her mind couldn't focus on such a long thought process, the lights, the movement, the scents, they all distracted her, and she felt suddenly comforted by the presence of the plush dog, even if she realized pretty fast that it was an inanimate object and as such, it couldn't do much.

She eventually got tired and thirsty, and weary of all the people who walked in and out of her room, and because she felt like it, she suddenly started wailing. The strength and timber of her own voice scared her, which made her cry even harder.

She wished somebody would come in, because the pangs in her stomach were growing stronger, a very unpleasant sensation, not exactly pain, but irritatingly persistent and harder to push out of one's mind than a bad memory.

The people, for once, were nowhere to be found. Where did they all go, she wondered? Goodness knows that they never stopped wearing down that door at all times in order to fret around her to the point of discomfort! Finally a lady she had never seen before came through it and fitted her with a device. It was somewhat rubbery, not at all like the tall lady's embrace, fragrant with citrus and chamomile, but it made the stomach pain subside.

The substance made her groggy and she felt, almost through a haze, the new lady changing her into fresh clothes, putting on soft music and turning down the lights. So many changes, all at the same time! Rosemary panicked, she wanted to know where the tall lady went, and if she was ever coming back, because she already missed her scent and her warmth, and the love in her eyes, so much love and only for her, but it was late, and she was tired, and groggy from the substance she had ingested, and the bed felt reasonably comfortable. The strange lady noticed she was staring at the fluffy dog, so she placed it next to her face, where she could see it better, right before she left.

Rosemary was left in the dark alone, all her sleepiness now gone, her eyes wide open, trying to reach into the shadows and find a familiar image, the one of the tall lady, preferably, but there was nothing in the room other than darkness and the heavenly fragrance brought in by the breeze.

She felt lonely, fearful, hopeful, and she really missed the tall lady, and then her psyche experienced a few other emotions she didn't know how to describe. Her mind started wandering again, searching for of a veil of slumber to ward off the weariness of the day. She stretched out her arms in a vague desire to get out of her bed and step through that door that opened and closed so frequently, to expand her universe beyond the limits of the now familiar room, but the slumber veil descended quickly, making the darkness of the room feel softer and lulling her to the world of dreams.

It had been an exhausting afternoon, a few hours can feel like forever depending on the length of one's life, and Rosemary was only one day old.

She couldn't do anything that didn't fit with the generally agreed upon norms of her social circle, so she moved heaven and earth to go back to work. By now she'd already started realizing that the career she had envisioned was never going to happen, but she did the responsible thing, worked hard and kept her dreams to herself.

It was the socially acceptable thing to do, therefore she didn't have to worry about opinions and commentary, and life went on, as usual, with the amendment that the new usual was one without dreams.

At the age of forty the option of giving up in order to avoid confrontation suddenly became unavailable to Rachel and her life didn't allow her to coast anymore.

She had to worry about opinions and commentary, was anxious and mortified of what people would think of her and people enthusiastically obliged, dumping the entire backlog of criticism, disapproval and contempt at her feet. By now they were, yet again, different people, and, for a change, she did have the sense to notice.

It finally dawned on Rachel that living on anxious and mortified in order to appease constantly changing groups of people was a very unhealthy lifestyle and definitely not one she could sustain long term. She realized she had things to contribute to the world and her views mattered.

She took a stern look at her life, kept what she liked and ditched what she didn't, got used to opinions and commentary and published her writing (yes, the one she had carefully stashed in a drawer because she was anxious and mortified of what people would think of her). She started learning things again and cultivated useless but personally rewarding skills. She no longer hesitates to voice her opinion in public and stopped worrying about failure.