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(In 1961, a British doctor, weighing his patients before and after death, determined that the human soul weights four-tenths of an ounce.)

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Weighing slightly less than a air mail letter, it rises out of the body with the last breath, hovers, floats slowly to the ceiling, listening for any signs of life, collects itself, then slips out into the hospital hallway past the empty wheelchairs, past the patients hobbling on crutches, past the nurses, the doctors, the janitor with his wet mop sloshing past the open doors, and the closed doors down the hall to the open window at the end and out, up, into the early evening air over the hospital parking lot, across the highway, the rush hour traffic, over the shops and schools, the church yard, the grave yard, drifting back to the old neighborhood, back to the familiar house, to the car parked in the driveway, to the back yard where the man's children are playing tag in the evening light, touching the tops of their heads so lightly they feel nothing, then slipping into the house through the screen door, passing from room to room, touching the furniture lightly, then up the stairs to the bedroom where his wife is just laying out what she will take to him in the hospital: fresh pajamas, a new book, cards from the children. 

 

He watches her, moves towards her, touching her so lightly she feels only the evening breeze.  The phone rings.  It is the doctor with the terrible news. She says nothing, replaces the phone with both hands, lowers herself onto the bed, her body shaking because she cannot bear up under the weight.