Day 1 (?):
Today[1] I died[2] and went to Heaven.[3]
It’s not a whole lot like I thought it would be– I sort of closed my eyes and opened my eyes, as if I had to stop and think for a moment, or just had something in my eye. I don’t remember the in-between. There is no time here, so tenses break down , language kind of breaks down, meaning kind of breaks down. That is to say, meaning still means, it just doesn’t mean as it did, or does, or will.
Still, it’s nice enough here, I guess. There’s no sun or moon– no night and day. It’s always just kind of lit, you know, and a hair over 21 degrees (that’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit but they only use Centigrade here), so you don’t really need clothes; some people don’t want to wear them, so they don’t, but some folks can’t let go.
All of this is to say that I don’t know if it’s been a full day. It might have been a day and a half or so. I’m just guessing because that’s what it feels like.
This is what I have learned so far about Heaven (or Hell.)
There are clouds everywhere. But they’re close, of course, so it’s actually just foggy here. You can’t really see more than thirty or so feet in any direction. There are also people everywhere, and they look like people, no wings or harps or anything. But they’re kind of hard to tell apart after you’ve looked at them for a while. At any rate, the first thing you do is you open your eyes, and you wait in a line for a long time. You can try to leave the line and explore if you want, but you won’t get very far or see anything interesting – it’s just lines of people in all directions – so eventually you just get in line where you’re supposed to be and wait there.
You can talk with your neighbors in the line – mine are pretty chatty. But they don’t seem as excited as you would expect them to be, or as excited as you yourself are not (which is a bit of a surprise, given the circumstances). If you talk to them, you’ll find that they know absolutely nothing about anything, which I suppose is one thing that the afterlife has in common with life among the living, or rather, life on Earth – or perhaps I’m still on Earth. I don’t know. So maybe life-before-the-afterlife is the right word.
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[1] This is not easy. Today? There are no days here, nor hours, nor minutes, nor months, nor seasons. But I rather insist on framing things this way for right now because even though the reality of the afterlife is right in front of my nose, I find I don’t have it in me any longer to struggle for it. I don’t know how long I’ll have the patience to keep this journal.
[2] It was a nasty bus accident. I had a full stomach and the two ladies from the coroner’s office spent four hours cleaning the upholstery where I was. My final bequest was a stain on the passenger side of TriMet bus #37761 running the #14 route between Lake Oswego and the University District.
[3] I don’t really know if this is Heaven at all, but there are no fires or worms and no one is gnashing their teeth, and everyone here is nothing like they are back home, and I know I’m dead, because I remember dying, but I’m also alive, or something, I don’t know.
~*~
Day 2 or 100 or Whatever:
At some point, the person in front of me hands me a stack of papers and says, “Take one and pass it on.” I do so.
It’s a form to fill out – not complicated but a bit more involved than, say, getting a library card. It asks my name (it actually asks, “What do you like to be called?”) and then asks me to list The Things I Got Right and The Things I Got Wrong. I volunteered at Habitat for Humanity, so I’m glad I was able to put that down, but I found myself having trouble explaining the circumstances under which I cheated on my first girlfriend and broke her heart. I definitely did that wrong. In fact, I would call that one of my greatest failures – and though it would have been easier to just leave it off the form, I was concerned that they knew about it and were testing me to see if I would be honest about The Things I Got Wrong.
So I spent a long time (I think?) trying to word it in a way that was truthful, but didn’t cast me in too bad of a light. I kind of wish I took longer with the form now. It was something to distract me for a bit, anyway.
The line I am standing in is very, very long and anything to do is something to do, which is better than listening to my neighbors speculate about why we’re here and what they did right or wrong or whether God is at the end of the queue, or any of the other blathering they constantly go on with.
There is no sign of Buddha or Moses or God or Jesus or Mohammed or anyone, so I still don’t know whose religion was right, and I don’t know if I will find out.
Before I died, I spent a lot of time thinking about life after death. The way I always pictured it, it went like this: I would sit down with a really huge, really kindly, bearded fellow who would finally give me answers to all of life’s Really Big Questions.
So here’s a thing that I suppose shouldn’t be surprising: You don’t get hungry, or cold, or tired, or thirsty. Your feet never hurt from standing. You always feel sort of vigorous – no, that’s not the right word. The word is capable. You just feel good, and a little antsy, and like your hands itch to hold something.
~*~
Infinity:
The line has moved. Pretty substantially. I have no idea how long it’s been.
Then, just ahead through the fog, I see it. A small, bookish man with spectacles, sitting behind a desk. He speaks so quietly that I can’t hear him when he’s addressing the people in line in front of me. But after time – time I can’t count – it’s finally my turn. Hallelujah!
I approach the desk, and he asks for my form. His voice is unexpectedly ordinary. I hand my form to him, and he peers intently at it.
“Okay.” He says, “Behind my desk is the afterlife. Do you understand?”
I say, “Isn’t this the afterlife?”
He says, “Technically, yes.” He adjusts his glasses. “Before you go in, do you have any questions? Please be brief, as there are many people waiting behind you.”
“Um.” I say, “No. Wait. Yes. Yes, I do. Am I going to Heaven or Hell?”
He smiles. “Young man, let me explain something to you. We know everything. We know how you died. We know why you died. We know why you failed. We know why she left you. We know why you gave up. We know it all.”
He points the knife-edge of a glare at me for just a moment, and then his face softens and he smiles again.
He says, “You’re dead now. What does it matter?”
I nod and take a deep breath. “Okay. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I walk around his desk, and take ten short steps forward.
The fog lifts, and light takes me.