A/N: 1 I want to thank everybody for their thoughts and prayers and support during these past 2 horrible weeks in my life. I expect it's going to be a while before the enormity of it catches up to me. I keep thinking of a line from "The Handmaid's Tale": Pain marks you, but too deep to see.

A/N 2: Some people have said "death comes in threes" and while it wasn't a death in my family, I'd like to ask for prayers for a family in my town whose house literally exploded yesterday morning (July 24th). Their 14 year old daughter died in the explosion. Their 18 year old daughter is in critical condition with 3rd degree burns. Both parents and their 16 year old son are in stable condition. 2 other children weren't in the house when it exploded. I think their 16 year old son was a friend of my nephew Dennis.

A/N 3: this is a shortened version of a longer story I'm going to write based on something Jensen said at the Toronto convention last year.

Say not in grief that she is no more
but say in thankfulness that she was
A death is not the extinguishing of a light,
but the putting out of the lamp
because the dawn has come.
Rabindranath Tagore

Being Winchesters, they died trying to save each other.

Sometimes there was an easy salt & burn. Usually there wasn't.

This one wasn't.

The ghostly attacks were so thick and fast as Dean cracked open the coffin that Sam was in a perpetual motion of reloading salt rounds into the shotgun, and firing those salt rounds into the vengeful spirit.

Dean was about to toss the lighter when he saw a broken tree branch as sharp as spear hurtling towards Sam, who was too busy reloading to see it. He tossed the lighter and lit up the grave. It obliterated the spirit, but it was too late to stop the branch.

"Sam!"

Dean shoved Sam out of the way. And when Sam saw why, he stepped in front of Dean.

And the branch gored them both, going through them each like a missile, shattering ribs, shredding veins, ripping open arteries. They bled out and were dead less than ten seconds after they hit the ground.

Dean blinked his eyes open and was surprised by the sunlight. He sat up and was surprised even more by his surroundings – he was on a bed in the most non-descript motel room he'd ever seen. On the bed next to him, Sam sat up as well.

"Dean? I thought – weren't we – aren't we - ?"

"Dead." Dean answered. They both looked down at their shirts; no blood, no holes, no nothing. No nothing anywhere – no sink, no chairs, no table, no lamps, no gear, no duffels, no computers, no weapons. Just the brothers on their beds."I sure thought we were."

"Do you think Cas -?" Sam asked.

"I don't know. If it was, I'd think he'd be here."

They both looked around some more.

"So –" Sam asked Dean. "Are we dead?"

"You're dead." A voice answered before Dean could. And there, in a doorway that led into a room they couldn't see into – there was John Winchester. Looking every bit the same as he had just before he died.

"Dad?" Dean said. His voice shook. "Dad?" He looked over to Sam, who had a look on his face as shocked as Dean was feeling.

"It's me." John said. He was grinning.

"What are you doing here?" Sam finally managed to ask and the expression on John's face softened.

"Your mother's waiting for us." He said. "I'm here to bring you home."

The end.

A/N 4: at the convention, Jensen said that if the boys die at the end of the series, he'd like John (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to come back to take them home.