"Oh come on. You’re being ridiculous." Samantha snorted and rolled her eyes at Helen who was too busy studying the depths of her coffee to notice.

"I don’t think so." She said at last without looking up from the dark liquid.

"Seriously… You’re like, what, twenty six? Isn’t it a bit early to be worrying about death?"

"What about the kid in the paper?" Helen said after a short silence. "Five years old and hit by a truck. He barely had time to come to terms with life before death came, too."

"Maybe that was better for him." Samantha sighed, giving up on keeping the mood cheerful. Sometimes Helen really knew how to drag you down. "At least he didn’t have a head full of uncertainties."

"No… his head contained the ultimate uncertainty - what he lacked was the possibilities we have gained with awareness of different religions and philosophies." She shook her head and took a sip from her cup. "They say in the moment before death time seems to slow and you relive your life. The brain works a little longer than the heart… can you imagine his fear and confusion in those moments, Sam? The pain and terror of knowing something was horribly wrong but not what. All he had was uncertainty about what would happen next. I need to come to terms with myself… my life and most importantly - my death."

"So which possibility will you go with?" Sam asked, uncomfortably taking a drink from her own cup. She hadn’t really given much thought to what a dying child would experience. As with most people she divorced herself from the subject as far as possible, keeping her focus on the outside where she could look at the school picture in the paper and think how sad it was to see the potential life snuffed out, give the parents her pity and prayers.

"I don’t think that part matters." Helen’s voice was little more than a whisper, her eyes distant and no longer seeing the cup in her hands. "I’ve done a lot of looking… over the last few months. It seems to me that faith dictates the future and that the important thing is to die at peace. The more you fear… the stronger the negative emotions, the more likely you will get stuck in some kind of purgatory… hell…"

"What if you don’t believe in hell? What if you believe in reincarnation?"

Helen jumped and looked up with an almost guilty smile. It was apparent she had forgotten Sam was there. "People who believe in that also usually believe in Karma or something similar. To be stuck as a ghost would be a punishment dictated by Karma to their way of thinking."

"So you just don’t want to be a ghost?" Sam shook her head. Only Helen would be sitting here on a bright summer morning worrying about being a ghost for eternity because she was afraid of death.

"I guess that’s part of it." She sighed. "It’s hard to explain… I’ve been living with a logical assumption that some day I will die just like everyone else. I haven’t really let that sink in, though. I think most people do the same thing. It’s easier to feel alive when you aren’t aware of some cosmic clock ticking down… never knowing what number it’s on. Still… wouldn’t it be nice to reach those brief moments before death and be comfortable with it? Instead of being scared you could look forward to the next step."

"But what if there isn’t a step? What if the atheists are right and we just go away?" Sam prompted, wondering at the wisdom of the words even as they tumbled from her mouth.

"That might be a blessing in its own way." Helen said softly before taking another drink.

"Sounds terrible to me." Sam wrinkled her nose. She had been raised Christian and remained so but over the years she had discovered that her friends ranged from Buddhist to atheist. Being open-minded was one of her saving graces to her mind. Helen was the only one she knew who did not openly proclaim one faith or another even though she tended to wax spiritual now and then.

"I can see why they would hope for it. If you talk to anyone over forty you will hear how the world has gone downhill. The older the person, the more vehement they are. Imagine if your soul were to survive… in Heaven you would be able to look down on Earth and see it continue to get worse and worse… In hell you would be too miserable to care. If you reincarnate then you get to experience the steady decline over and over and over. If you become a ghost you may or may not notice since most people say they relive their own lives or the moments of their death again and again. Any of those futures would become tedious after a while, don’t you think?"

"I suppose." Sam said doubtfully. Heaven was supposed to be a place of bliss and wonder that you never got bored with.

"Anyway… that isn’t really the point."

"What is? Why are you so obsessed with this today?"

"I don’t know. I woke up with it on my mind and haven’t been able to shake it. I think it has something to do with my dreams last night but I can’t remember them." Helen smiled apologetically. "I just need to accept my mortality."

Sam finished her cup and checked her watch. "Oh hell… I have to run. I’m going to be late for my shift."

"Alright. I’ll catch you tomorrow. Thanks for putting up with me."

"Any time." Sam smiled, grabbing her purse. After leaving money for her drinks she caught the bus, the strange conversation circling her mind. A long day at work and an exhausted, dreamless sleep that night helped return her to her more normal frame of mind. She wasn’t sure what to think, but could not convince herself to pretend to be surprised, when she picked up the paper the next morning and saw Helen’s picture on the front page next to a photo of the coffee shop in shambles. A man had fallen asleep at the wheel not half an hour after Sam left and the car veered, broke through the wall and injured numerous people. There was only one fatality.