Quote 46
"You can't just make me different and then leave," I said out loud to her. "Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was fine with just me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die." For she had embodied the Great Perhaps—she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps. (20after.23)
Okay—so the adventure is worth the pain and suffering for Miles. But we have to wonder if Miles's "faith in perhaps" really dies with Alaska. We hope not and we don't think it did… How about you?
Quote 47
But even so, the afterlife mattered to me. Heaven and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere. I liked to imagine her looking down on us, still aware of us, but it seemed like a fantasy, and I never really felt it—just as the Colonel had said at the funeral that she wasn't there, wasn't anywhere. I couldn't honestly imagine her as anything but dead, her body rotting in Vine Station, the rest of her just a ghost alive only in our remembering. (21after6)
Miles is struggling to hold on to his belief in the afterlife. Now that he's faced with real death, he's got to reconcile what he wants to believe with what's actually running through his head, which is hard for anyone to do.
Quote 48
I was not religious, but I liked rituals. I liked the idea of connecting an action with remembering. In China, the Old Man had told us, there are days reserved for grave cleaning, where you make gifts to the dead. And I imagined that Alaska would want a smoke, and so it seemed to me that the Colonel had begun an excellent ritual. (46after.23)
Once again the Old Man helps Miles realize something about his life. The question is, will Miles and his friends continue to make rituals about Alaska to remember her, or will they accept their forgettings.