Everyone’s heard the rumors that when you die, they take you into a house you’ve never seen before—real dilapidated and creepy for added effect maybe—and in each room, they make you watch people from throughout the course of your life reading or listening to all the things you’ve wanted to say to them when you were alive but never did. Letters, emails, notes in books, burned CDs, text messages, silent moments face to face—any words that remained unspoken or never got sent are read aloud by their intended recipients or they hear an audio recording of your voice. It’s not so much the realities and memories of your life flickering in and out of your vision just before you die. It’s more like watching and wondering about the life you might have had if anyone had ever found out what you were concealing from them after you’re already gone.

We all think this sounds like a nightmare. And that we better try even harder not to die just in case. But we mostly choose not to believe it as truth. Plus we’re fuzzy on the details. Are you in the room with the person as they react? Do you get to interact with them before you’re whisked away to the afterlife? One last hug or kiss or tender squeeze of a beloved hand? Or do you stand in another room separated by glass where you can see and hear them but they can’t see or hear you? Is it really them and do they live the rest of their existence with this new knowledge? Or is it a simulation of some kind and it’s only happening in your post-death dream state and they are out there grieving and mourning the version of you they knew in life? The one who kept secrets from them until it was too late to reverse and change course. Not this ghostly truth telling version of you.

We don’t know who started the rumors but we know who has been eager to confirm them. She had a near death experience and claims it happened to her just before she opened her eyes and miraculously survived. She says the reason she lived is so she could have another chance to say all those things to all those people while she’s still here on earth with us.

I do think of my favorite stranger sometimes and my undeclared love for him from afar. We both take a similar route on our long morning walks and often point out beautiful birds, clouds, and trees to each other. We mention what music or audiobooks we’re listening to and make recommendations. Today we pass each other with just a nod of the head because he’s on a phone call. While watching him go, I step into the crosswalk and gasp as a car horn blasts to warn me of my possible death.

I think about how the next and last time I see my stranger may be in this haunted house that I don’t even know if I believe exists and it is almost enough to make me walk after him to change that fate. But what if he’s unavailable? Or worse, cruel? What if a million other things that I can’t bear to imagine about this person—or the idea of him—who has made me so happy without even knowing? I remain where I am and picture what he would say when I’m dead and he learns that someone out there might have loved him and never told him. “Oh no,” I hope he’d say. “I might have loved her, too.”