"Since I Died" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Oh my, the language, the way this was written swept me away. Beautiful this written style would be a style I look up to and strive towards. The use of words rolled and the whole pieces was a smooth curve of language. I want to read another piece form her. the biggest thing i want to tap on is figuring out the beginning and the end, i suppose my timing was off in class. this could be on cause of the confusion of both the beginning and the end. The way the beginning sounded was as though she (narrator) was already dead and a good amount of time passed, then the story went to right before death, the in between, then back on earth as a spirit after being called back with a prayer from her lover. Then really taking on the fact 'ok I'm a spirit, I'm dead' and being restless and bouncy to restless and stuck. Then she goes somewhere far off in a small amount of time. starts to think of what is present for her and the happenings.......the link before the questions were the story states 'suddenly, i saw....' I think the Narrator has gone to the point in the beginning where she is starting to fade while she is watching her lover and all these thought are stirring in mingle. The beginning sounds as though the spirit has already established that 'I'm dead' and was asking questions, yet stating to fade away because the air at first did not go through her, then it did seemingly out of her control. so she was fading. Since the narrator is a spirit, the boundaries of human life no longer apply, so there is no problem with being in two places at once.

The three lines struck me as most important, in relation to the 'big picture' and meaning of this story: 'Death is Dumb and Life is Deaf' , 'To live, is Dying; and I will die. To die is life, and you shall live.' , and 'Then i thought again:"it is she who dies; I shall live"

This story seemed to have an epidermis message of death is ok, it is in fact joyous, but you will not fully comprehend death until it happens, and the irony is no one can be told in the same ways now that they're rather separated souls

````````i'm not quite done yet with this, it is what i got so far)