Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate

The book I'm currently reading (and have been for a couple months - it isn't that long, but I wait until I'm in bed to start reading, and after 10 or so pages, I stop to sleep) takes place in two settings. The first is the near-future, a world devastated by a man-made virus that has rapidly spread to kill most of the population. The second is a city, neither heaven nor earth but somewhere in between. People go there after they have died and "crossed over," and they stay there only as long as someone on Earth still has memories of them. In other words, once everyone who knew you is gone, you move on from this in-between world.

Before the virus, most people would stay in the city for 30-70 years, depending on how old they were when they died. But once the virus started wiping out whole families and cities and countries, people might stay in the city for a month or a day. 

As someone who tends to picture herself as worm meat, post death, this is a very attractive idea, one that I can somewhat reconcile with my depressing notions of mortality. That is, we live on in the memories of those we leave behind, and those memories are what sustain us.

From Othello's soliloquy in Act 5, just before he stabs himself:

... I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well.

I get hung up on connections between things, whether they're real or perceived. Othello, here, is about to kill himself. He's just killed his wife and belatedly realized that his wife wasn't unfaithful. And he's worried about how he'll be spoken of, how he'll live on in the memories of others. This contrasts with Desdemona's acceptance of her fate. She knows that she is going to be unjustly killed. But still, in response to Emilia's question of who "hath done this deed," Desdemona says, 

Nobody; I myself. Farewell
Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell!

She dies believing that she'll go on to heaven. Enough Shakespeare for tonight.