[Oh, he doesn't want to know. He's not going to ask and he's going to be optimistic for once in his life because the alternative is much worse.]

Souls can choose to wait. I don't know how long it works, it might even be indefinitely. Where someone can be like a ghost, though I don't believe a person can interact with the world like that.

He may have been doing that. Waiting at the Gate.

[He mutters under his breath, cursing in a language Al probably won't recognize.]

But then how did you get your memories back?