READERS GUIDE

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. What is your definition of an “afterlife”?

2. Do you think that the people we love “live on” after they die? In what form?

3. If you could “see” someone in the afterlife (the way Boyd “sees” Russell), who would it be?

4. What happens when people (like Boyd) in the heat of an argument (or in the grip of strong emotion) say things that are regrettable–even “unforgivable”?

5. Does marriage (and/or any other intimate relationship) demand fairly constant and ongoing acts of forgiveness?

6. Why are we afraid to talk about death?

7. Why do the physical “realities” of death (what embalmers like the character Griggs confront daily) frighten us?

8. Is death at the center of life?