So This Is Heaven

            I thought I was dead, because my oncologist had only given me one more week at most. Now I not only could breathe without a machine, but I felt a vigor in my limbs and an alertness in my mind. Could I have made a miraculous recovery? It must be so, because I was back in my own bedroom. I was free of all those tubes, bedpans, IVs and the bland hospital food I’d been forcing down my throat for the past month, at least when I had been able to eat at all. Yet, I remembered nothing about feeling better, getting out of the hospital or coming home. 

            Looking past my nightstand, I noticed that the room looked very different. Weren’t my walls white and not that pale blue? That pale blue looked vaguely familiar and the walls seemed to glow like there was a light behind them. The dresser looked very familiar and yet not familiar. It looked shinier or smoother, like it did when it was new. Was this my room or some new wing of the hospital where I was put to recover? Maybe my wife had brought the lamp from home, but would she have brought the nightstand as well? Not only that but my old black wallet was there along with my latest John Grisham novel. I couldn’t recall taking either of those to the hospital. 

            “Suzanne,” I yelled. “Are you home? Can you help me out of bed?” I waited a few minutes. Where was my watch? Looking at my wrist, I had to notice that it, my whole hand, my whole forearm looked different. The skin was smooth as a new bar of soap and the hairs were black. My silvery Fossil watch was missing, though. I always wore it. I always wanted to know what time it was. There was no clock in the room. I sat up to look around and, to my surprise, had no trouble doing so. Hmm, well there was no sense in lying in bed if I felt okay. I got up with more energy than I had felt in years. Looking at my feet, I noticed that they were just like my hands. No wrinkles and I was standing as steady as a concrete slab. Impossible! I was 89 years old. 

            I had to see myself in the mirror. Get to the bathroom. What?! The bedroom door’s locked. How can that be? That door never had a lock. I banged on it calling again for Suzanne. No answer. I went to the window. Where were the curtains? Looking out, I could see nothing. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either and I had no view of my back yard. What was going on? There was my bed with its sheets as clean and freshly wrinkled as though I had slept in them for only a night. The other side, where Suzanne slept, did not seem slept in at all. The paintings on the walls were…gone. Instead, my old Neil Young poster that I threw away years ago hung there. I had kept it as a memory of my youth until the nostalgia got embarrassing. How could it get there again? Along the other wall was the closet. I went to open it and I could not open the door. How could that door be locked too? I was beginning to get scared, like I was in prison or a mental ward. 

            Then the bedroom door opened. Standing there as she had not done in, how many years had it been? was my older sister, Jeanne. She had died five years ago, yet there she was looking not only fine, but young, as she had when she was in her twenties. She was never more than pleasant looking, but right now she was the most beautiful woman I could imagine. Her brown eyes sparkled brightly as I had not seen before. It was then that I was certain that I was hallucinating, maybe from the chemotherapy. 

            “Hello. Larry. It’s Jeanne. I know you must be confused so I am here because they decided that I was the best person to act as your guide, the way I used to when you were a little boy.” 

            I was really glad to see her, but her appearance was doing nothing to calm my feelings of, of, of not dread, anxiety or fear, but just, I don’t know strangeness. Her brunette hair was done in the style of the 70s: straight and long as she had not worn it for years and she was wearing a tie-dyed shirt. She looked like the same slightly pudgy, round faced Jeanne I had always loved and respected. Except for that odd sparkling, her eyes were the same as always with that mischievous gleam and the slight droopiness in her left eyelid that gave her a drowsy look. 

            “It feels strange doesn’t it,” said Jeanne. “Here, let me give you a snuggle hug. You remember how I used to do that when you were little and would get scared?” 

            She put her supple arms around me and I could feel a strength there that I had not known before. I mean, when we were kids, she would wrestle me to the ground and sit on me when I “bugged” her, but nothing like this. I didn’t sense the kind of strength that made it feel like she was squeezing me hard. It was more like she was transferring some kind of energy into me. I felt that I was growing stronger, more confident somehow for no other reason than that hug. 

            “Okay, now brace yourself,” she said. A long pause. She looked powerfully into my eyes and I as much felt what she said as heard it. “You’ve died. This is Heaven. Think, Larry. You had stage 4 cancer. I died a while ago. Where else could we both be? I am not an illusion and you are not having a dream.” 

            Between her words and her gaze, I was almost convinced. Would you be? Why would I be in heaven? I was never a very good Christian. In fact, I was on the atheist side of agnostic or so I told my friends. On the other hand, the one or two times I thought I was going to get killed, I admit to having prayed, very quickly the one time my car got sideswiped by a truck. I answered Jeanne in my most logical way: “Huh?” 

            “Yes, you have a lot of questions, as does everyone who gets here, but for now, I just want you to rejoice in your body. Here. Look in this mirror.” A mirror appeared in her hand. I was not sure where she got it because it was one of those large mirrors like they use at the barber. I could clearly see myself without glasses (What happened to my glasses?). I saw myself not as a dried up old man of nearly 90, but the strong young man I used to be decades before. I was guessing I was about 30 again. I had to admit that it felt very, very good. It looked like I had lost the 20 pounds I had gained before the cancer emaciated me. My hair was jet black and I had all my teeth. This was the best dream ever, I told myself. I sure didn’t want to wake up in that hospital room again to face more endless days of stone faced nurses and anonymous orderlies draining my catheters and tapping my IV tubes. Then the mirror disappeared or, at least, I didn’t see what Jeanne did with it. I guess I was still dreaming. I slapped myself. 

            “I guess I’m still dreaming, because you’re still here.” 

            Jeanne laughed. “Sorry, I’m not just laughing at what you said. I’m so happy that you’re here with me again. It took me quite a long time to totally get over the fact that I was dead and not dreaming. There’s nothing more that I can say or do, but if you come with me, I think you can talk to some who will start to convince you where you are.” 

            “What year is it?” I asked. 

            “It doesn’t really matter, but I can tell you that you died of cancer in 2038.” 

            “What’s my mother’s maiden name?” 

            “Larry, come on. No need to see if I’m really me. You’ll get convinced very soon.” 

            We left my bedroom. The whole house was pretty much the way I remembered it from, oh, about 50 years before. Jeanne had been there many times, staying in the guest room that we added before the kids all left home. It was odd, because now it did not seem like my house, yet it was a very familiar place. Where were we? Jeanne led me into the guest room. Sitting on the bed, looking expectantly at the two of us were our mother and father, looking none the worse for wear even though they should both be about 120 now. I suppose I should not have been surprised that they looked half that age, after seeing how I and my sister looked, but it was still very, very odd. My dream had taken me back in time. Yet, why did this dream feel so real? As glad as I was to see my parents, I wanted it to end. It did not feel like a dream. I pinched myself because slapping hadn’t worked. My father saw me. He stood up and he seemed taller and more slender than I remembered him, a full six feet. 

            “Son, this is no dream. We’re here with you forever now. We both of us are sorry for Suzanne for losing you, but she’ll join us when it is her turn and she’ll be as happy to see you as we are now.” 

            “Yes,” was all my mother said. She had never been the more talkative one. She was wearing that floral dress I always liked and her hair was abundant and curly, as it had been when I was a teen. Her blue eyes radiated a gentle light as Jeanne’s did. Somehow that did not seem strange. Dad had all his hair again and it was only partly gray. He was dressed in a suit as if he was going to work. That was the way I was most used to seeing him, I supposed. His eyes too seemed unusually bright.     

        

            “This is not a dream?” That was all I could utter as I sat, or rather, collapsed on the bed next to my mother and hugged her. I sobbed on her shoulder as I had not done since I was 6. As odd as it sounds, I thought of that song that said there are no tears in Heaven. I was crying real tears, getting my mom’s shoulder all wet. I was so upset I didn’t notice that the wet spot dried almost instantaneously after I sat up. 

            “Mom? Dad? When did you get here? Is this really Heaven?” 

            “Well,” my father said, “first this really is ‘Heaven’ but we’re on Earth. This is the Earth of God’s future when he has saved all those He deems worthy of being here. As to when we got here, that’s tricky. We got here at the same time as you did and as everyone else who is here, even if they died thousands of years ago.” 

            “Dad,” said Jeanne “I think we’d better wait on this, poor Larry looks really shocked.” 

            “No, I’m okay. I want to hear this. According to all of you, I’ve died and am now in Heaven, but this is Earth. So, how can this be Earth and how can I be whatever this is if I was never a Christian and why don’t I feel like I ever died?”    

             “Lawrence,” my mother said, “I think I should explain. You always listened to me whenever I had something serious to tell you, like the time that girl, Becky, broke your heart. First, you died a peaceful death in your sleep as a result of the cancer that finally took you. The reason you are on Earth is that when Jesus promised salvation, he made it clear that he would restore Earth as the final place where all souls would go when we died. Yes, he did say that it we should believe in him as the Son of God to have eternal life, but he also sacrificed himself so that all who lived a life where they followed the golden rule would be saved. That’s you. Does this begin to make sense?”       

              “No, not at all. How can you have just gotten here when you died years ago and why do you know all this if you just got here?” 

                “Larry,” said my father. “To God time has no meaning. “Before” and “After” are merely relative terms here. Upon salvation, all souls came here at the same time. We appear to have been here earlier because in your mortal life, you died after we did, so we were sent to explain this to you as soon as you got here so you would be gradually be made to understand by those you loved and respected.” 

            “Well, if God is so all powerful, why didn’t he just wave his hand and make me understand without all of this, um, pretense?” 

            “We don’t know, Larry,” said Jeanne. “You have to ask God. I’d guess it has something to do with free will.” 

            “Well, isn’t that special? Where do I find him?” I don’t think they caught my sarcastic reference to the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live. My father chuckled in that way that used to make me mad at him since it sounded so patronizing, but I felt no anger now. Instead, I patiently heard him (and I was never one for patient listening) tell me that God was not a Being to meet. He had no shape or form, If I wanted to meet him, I simply needed to pray. 

            “I don’t know any prayers.” I said. 

            “No, no, not pray out loud,” Dad said, “and none of those standard church prayers but pray inside of you. Ask like you are asking yourself and He will be there. You see, we all have God within us and He will answer to any question you ask Him.” To say I was skeptical is an understatement, but what else did I have to do? I guess if I was dead, this would settle it for me. I asked God my basic question, “Am I really dead?” The immediate answer came to me from somewhere inside of me: “Yes.” Somehow with that answer came other answers to questions I had not even thought to ask: No, I no longer had internal organs, blood, muscles or anything else. I was a purely spiritual being, sort of a being of light. Well, that explained why my family all had that glow in their eyes. I could still cry (as I knew), eat, or even pee if I wanted to, but they were all spiritual simulations of what had been my physical body as a mortal. I will not age, but I can choose to be in any body I had had before, from baby to senior citizen, but no, I could not assume anyone’s else’s appearance. Yes, I would be able to find others who had preceded me in death. No, I would not be able to see those who were yet to die according to my old mortal calendar. I was going to need clarification on that one, but I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t understand. Asking that of myself, I got God’s answer: there are some things no once mortal mind would ever be able to grasp. 

            Coming out of my prayer reverie, it seemed like my mother, father and sister were no longer the same. They were now like beings of pure light, yet I knew they were still whom I thought they were. 

            “Ah,” said my father, “He now sees our souls as we knew he would. He was always quick to catch on. What did it take me? Three days? No, I know there are no ‘days’ here, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as him. Now if I know my Larry, he is going to want to see other people he loves. Larry, it’s hard to explain but you won’t be able to see Suzanne until she’s ready to join you. I know we said that time is meaningless here and, yes, God could make it so that you could see her as well as you children, our grandchildren whom we miss terribly, but there has to be a strict order to these things. This means that you can’t now look upon her as she lives out the rest of her life, ghost stories and so forth notwithstanding. When she and your children do get here, it will not seem to you that any time has passed at all when you do get to see them. In the meantime, there are a lot of friends and relations you can see right now.” 

            I still did not understand how this all worked, but if time was meaningless, then I had nothing but time. I think the answer to the time question was more one of sequencing than the kind of time mortals knew. Time for mortals was just a way of ordering things anyway, but we also counted it out like it was money or something to keep track of. Here time was mostly a matter of having a before and after. I knew I would see my family “after,” so I thought I would find some old friends and relatives “before” they arrived. Somehow, I knew that I need not find the internet or any other service to locate them, but just get out of my house and think about who I wanted to see. 

            First, I wanted to see Becky Lee. As soon as I thought of her, there she was, looking a lot younger than me, but then, I had met her when she was only 16 and so, as I was getting the hang of this afterlife thing, she was 16 and I imagined that I looked 16 to her too. She was not as pretty as I had remembered her, not that she was homely, but she was just average looking with a slightly crooked nose and kind of mousy brown hair. She did have a very nice figure, though, and I suppose at 16 that was what I had attended to. I was glad that she made it to Paradise, but I found that my old feelings had left me, so we just had a short chat. Next I found my mother’s parents, whom I had not seen for about 70 years. They got so excited to see me and they had a lot more energy than I had been used to, which no longer surprised me. They treated me to my favorite dessert, a huge chocolate sundae. It was the first thing I’d eaten since I… passed away and it was delicious. I mean, this was Heaven. I could eat all I wanted and not worry about getting fat. A similar thing happened with my paternal grandparents, with Grandpa Joe treating me to one of his perfectly grilled steaks. 

            I noticed that wherever I went, the buildings, streets, even the trees seemed familiar to me. I even found my old grammar school and it was in session. I walked into my old first grade classroom where my favorite teacher, Mrs. Johnson, taught. There she was looking exactly as I remembered her and I was exactly as she remembered me. This was going to be the way with everyone I guessed: me seeing them as I best remembered them and they seeing me as I was when they knew me. It also struck me that my memory for everything was not exactly perfect. All the other students were there, but I couldn’t remember any of them, so I just sat there quietly much as I had done when I was six. I did remember a lot considering how young I had been, for example, I remembered how the portrait of President Eisenhower was hung just under the flag and how Mrs. Johnson had an old wind-up phonograph record player on the back counter. I stayed in the class until school was “over” then went up and spoke briefly to Mrs. Johnson who was delighted to see me. As soon as I left the room I again became a being of light. 

            Since I had nothing but time, I wanted to see everything that had been a major part of my life. I wondered how my old house was. Not the one I grew up in with my parents, but the one in which Suzanne and I raised our two daughters and our one son. I guessed I would not find them there, but would there not be some signs of our life there, but try as I might, I could not find it. Oh, I found the street where the house should have been and even the lot where it should have been. The house that was there was not mine, though, and I could not go inside. Everything was locked and I could not even see inside the windows. Given that I at least had been inside of it when I first came here, I thought this was odd. Something inside of me (God, is that you again?) told me that this was the way it had to be until at least my wife could join me. Oh well. I had plenty of other places to see. 

            Another odd thing about this Paradise was that there were no cars or any other kind of motorized transportation. No horses either, unless you wanted one. How was I getting from place to place? It was only then that I realized that I could just wish to be in a certain place or with a certain person and it would happen, as long as it was “permitted.” What if I wanted the exercise of riding on a bicycle or jogging? The answer came to me in the form of a bicycle that just appeared, but it struck me that I did not need exercise. If I wanted to ride the bike for fun, sure, why not? Then I wondered if there was any such thing as television, radio or the internet here. Again, anything I wanted was something I could simply wish to have and there it would be. Was there anything I couldn’t get? I wished for my favorite foods and there they were. I wished for my favorite symphonies and they would play from some source I could not see. What about sex? Well, I was still married, so I did not even try to wish for any women I might have coveted in my youth, but something told me that it could happen. Or not, wasn’t that adultery? Then I began to wonder about the ten commandments and other rules in the Bible. I think I had broken about half of the commandments, and God only knew what else, in my mortal life. Were they really all that sacred? If so, what was I doing here. If not, could I do anything like lie or steal here? It was a pointless question. There was no need to lie, steal, etc. here. The only sin I could think of being able to commit had to do with adultery. Just for the sake of experimenting, I wished that I could be with a woman I had lost my mind over in college, Karen, and there she was, looking very sexy and willing. It was too much for me, so I just talked to her, explaining how much I had thought I loved her before, but that the idea of sex in heaven was beyond me. She understood and was gone. 

            There were so many things I wondered about. I guess the idea of my becoming an angel with a halo and wings, strumming on a harp was silly. Same with Pearly gates. But what about St. Peter? There was supposed to have been a St. Peter and even if he wasn’t the keeper of the Pearly Gates, if he existed, surely he was here and knew a lot about what was going on. No sooner had that thought entered my mind then there he was. 

            “Hello Lawrence,” said St. Peter in perfect English. “What do you want to ask me?” He was short, about 5 feet-two and very dark. He had a long beard and wore what looked to be rags. I already knew that he wanted to present himself in the aspect he had had when he lived on earth, so this was no surprise. 

            After taking a moment to sort out my questions, I asked, “Why am I, a non-Christian who did not lead a particularly holy life, in here?” 

            “Because you never intentionally hurt anyone, tried to do your best, helped others sometimes, and usually honored the Golden Rule. Most of all, you were able to give and accept love.” 

            “That’s it? I lied, cheated a little, stole a few things when I was kid, fornicated before I got married and never went to church after I turned 18 and I don’t even have to spend a bunch of time in purgatory?” 

            “No, Lawrence. First there is no purgatory. Second, Jesus’ sacrifice on earth made it possible for anyone to get to Heaven as you have done.” 

            “But this is Earth. Are there people who didn’t get to make it here?” 

            “Oh my, yes this is Earth and I imagine you can guess the identities of some of the people who did not get here.” 

            “Um, sure, but let’s not go there right now. Where are they?” 

            “They no longer exist. That’s all.” 

            “Are they in Hell?” 

            “There is no Hell and no Satan either. Evil is what men do of their own choosing. Those who do too much evil simply are no more once they die.” 

            “What about little children? Aborigines who never knew who Jesus was, people who lived before Jesus came? Is there anyone I knew who did not make it?” 

               “All little children who died too early are here. In fact, here they grew to adulthood and can do whatever they want as you can do. The rest, if they led the kind of life you did, are here as well. As for anyone you knew not being here, I’m afraid that I must tell you that someone you would hope to see will not be here.” 

            This pronouncement was the first negative thing I had heard in Heaven and I felt it deeply. I had a piercingly black suspicion who it was, but even as I hoped I was wrong I asked, “Who? Why?” I said. 

            “I only tell you this to prepare you and even then, I would not tell you had you not asked. It is your son, Benjamin.” 

            The unheavenly chill I had felt, gave way to a plummeting feeling that was nothing like I had ever felt before. What made it so bad was the sense that I should have known this as his father. He had always been a difficult child and as hard as Suzanne and I had tried to teach him, to guide him, to control him, it was as if he was set in his ways. 

            “But it’s my fault he was not as good as he should have been. Why?” I repeated. “When will he die? Can you take me instead?” 

            “I think you know why he will not be here, since you tried your best to create the better path for him to follow, but God made free will for a reason and even though he was led to evil by those he trusted, he always had a choice. It does not matter when he dies, since you will not see him.” 

            “What year is it now?” 

            “I can only tell you that it is the same year on earth as the day you died, but your son will die 7 years from that year. Again, you will not know it. Just as the world ends far into the future, giving you a date would be meaningless. To answer your next question, no, the earth was not destroyed, but let’s just say it was wiped clean of evil.” 

            For some reason, that revelation, shocked me into forgetting my own grief for the moment. “You mean there was, will be an actual apocalypse? That makes some sense. And all the plants and animals?” 

            “They will be around as they are even now, but you cannot see them. They have a light all their own. Of course, if you do see a beloved pet you had, it is a product of your spirit. Such pets are not ‘real’ in the sense that they have an immortal soul. Now I must tell you something else regarding your son. When your wife gets here, you must be the one to tell her about him.” 

            “Why must I be the one St. Peter?” 

            “I think you know the answer to that question already.” 

            “What do I do now?” 

            “Ah, that is the one question, I cannot answer, but you will come to know it.” Then St. Peter was no longer there. I was left with a grief about what was to surely happen, but was yet to come. I could do nothing now to prevent it. I could not even mourn for him with Suzanne. Suzanne! Would she be there when he died? The echo in my brain said no, for why else would I need to tell her? 

            It was then that I felt the full burdens of what St. Peter had told me. I was never going to see my little Ben again. As all parents think, I tended view him as he was when he was innocent. As I lay dying he had never come to see me. For all I knew he did not care. So many were the times I had let my parenting of him tumble through my mind like a washing machine, somehow believing I could clean him—and me— of the soil that had sullied his very arteries. I knew it was my fault because Suzanne gave him all her love, but it had not been enough. From the first time I found him torturing a small kitten, I had no idea how to deal with his streak of sadism. I refused to even label it that way until…now. Now was too late. I wondered if Suzanne, still with him, could somehow save him, but a faint throbbing inside of me gave me another unequivocal answer. 

            It took me some time until I could set all these thoughts aside and think about what I now had to do. I had, how much time? I had learned that even though time was not a meaningful concept in heaven, there were two ways of looking at it. One was the idea of sequence. This was the idea that things never happened all at once, but in some logical order. The other was that we mortals all had a sense of elapsed time. For example, in human terms, by the watch I still felt I had to wear, it took me about half an hour to read a 20 page short story. As far as days, weeks, months, were concerned, yes, the earth still took 24 hours to spin around, but no one needed to sleep or eat by the clock. Weekends? Birthdays? Holidays? No reason for any of those, so we had no calendars. 

            So it was that I had no concept of how long I waited to see Suzanne. I only knew that I spent a lot of time torturing myself. It was at this point that I started to wonder what the point of all this was. Was an immortal existence simply a matter of satisfying ones hedonistic desires and spending time with friends and family? Eternity is a long time and I could see how this would get old after, oh, 10,000 years. It was pretty ironic, I thought, because I had read a lot of existentialist philosophy dealing with the question of finding some meaning in life. Now here I was dealing with the question of finding some meaning in the after-life. It’s comparatively simple to find something to do to provide meaning for a mere 40 to 60 years of adult life, but for forever? What was I going to do? In a sense, I was in sort of a Hell knowing that Ben would never join me. 

            One thing I discovered was that even though I could just wish for food, drinks, music, sex, etc. I could not simply wish I had finished reading a book, learning how to play a trumpet, or completing a painting and have it just done instantly. I wanted to find something to take my mind off of my son. Wishing I had a copy of War and Peace, I read it and it took me 12 hours. This was straight reading time, too, for my eyes did not become tired, I did not need to sleep or eat, and the watch I had recovered still counted time in much the same way it always had, so it was a real 12 hour marathon. It was a great book. Great. I could read all of the greatest books ever written before or after my mortal life had ended and it would still not fill any large gap in the time I had. It was getting so that I spent a lot of time just feeling sorry for myself and wishing Suzanne were with me. 

            Then came a mental message from St. Paul. Apparently one of his many tasks was to be the communicator of new arrivals to those in Heaven who meant something to them. He told me that Suzanne was coming soon and I had to greet her. I had seen how my sister had gently introduced me to my death and now I would do so for Suzanne. Only I had the burden of telling her about Benjamin. It would be best, clearly, for me to wait until she was fully adjusted to her own death, before I gave her the information about Ben. At least I would not have to tell her that he was not in Heaven with us, after all, he would have been alive when she joined me in death. I had to contact her two brothers and her parents to let them know of her arrival. None of them knew about Ben. I wasn’t sure how I would appear to her. I supposed we would both be young. All I knew was that I would be the first soul she would see when she got here. 

            The “room” she was in looked only like a big shell with a door to me, but I guessed that for her, the room was something very familiar to her, as it had been for me, maybe even our bedroom. When I stepped into the door, I did not even notice what room it was. I only had eyes for her for she looked radiantly beautiful as she had when we first got married, and she had always been the most beautiful woman in the world, at least to me. Objectively, she had regular features set in heart shaped face, so anyone would admit that she was pretty. She was wearing her wedding gown and I wore a white tuxedo complete with tails. Her blonde hair was bobbed short the way I always liked it and her brown eyes shone with a light that seemed brighter than any I had seen even in my sister. Unlike Jeanne, I said nothing but gave her a big hug and cried dry tears all over her veil. Unlike me, she had a long string of questions to toss at me. 

            “Larry, why are you alive? Why do you look so young? Why are you crying? Why are you dressed like that? Why am I dressed like this? Why do I feel so good?” 

            “Whoa, whoa, Suzanne,” I said. “First, you must brace yourself. We are no longer alive. You were very sick and surrounded by our daughters who prayed for you as you taught them, but you didn’t make it.” I wasn’t sure how I had come to know this, but it must have been conveyed to me from St. Paul. 

            “Of course I made it. I’ve never felt better. Where are Elaine and Carrie anyway?” 

            “Remember how you used to try to get me to go to church because you were afraid you would go to Heaven alone, without me? Bless your soul, I think you might have saved me, because we are both in Heaven right now. I know it’s hard to believe, but it must be easier for you since you were always a faithful Christian.” 

            “I’m dead?” 

            “You have left your mortal body, but you will live forever with me. I have some people I want you to meet, then I’ll answer all of your questions, one at a time. We have eternity.” 

            Maybe because she was a true Christian, Suzanne adapted to her being in Heaven a lot more readily than I had. She was soon very comfortable with the notion, but pined away for our children and grandchildren. Since I had no idea what had happened to her or our growing brood after I died, Suzanne spent some time catching me up on earthly news, even though it made her sad to recollect it. Her sorrow was leavened by her certainty that our whole family would eventually be reunited, including all the grandchildren and great grandchildren, only one of which I had even known about. She spoke almost entirely about Elaine and Carrie and their families, including Elaine’s two grandchildren, whom I never got to see. Then she hit me with a surprise question that I had not expected. 

            “Where’s Benjamin? He should have gotten here ahead of me.” 

            I was shocked. It had not occurred to me that Ben died before she did and I had failed to ask St. Peter that very question. So she was expecting him to be here. Stalling so that I could get steady myself for what I needed to tell her, I said, “I haven’t seen him at all. Why do you ask? He was alive, remember, when I had the cancer that killed me?” 

            “God must be keeping him from you,” said Suzanne. “You know you tried so hard to get him to behave when he was a kid and we both lost control of him when he got to his teen years.” 

            “But to see him go to prison. That was the hardest thing I ever had to bear.” 

            “And it actually made him worse. Turned him into a drug addict. I can tell you that he died of a drug overdose even though he was in his 60s, but he’s my son and I want to see him.” 

            That was it. She had forced the issue. I wanted to let her get used to being here, but she always was the stronger of the two of us. She would take this news better than I did. 

            “Suzanne, I have to be the one to tell you this, but Benjamin is not going to be here at all. I’m so sorry I held back just now but I had planned to tell you later after you got used to being here.” A brief look of disbelief dimmed her eyes until she realized the underlying truth behind what had to have happened to our son. 

            “Oh my own divine Lord. He’s gone to Hell.” She began to sob very loudly. 

            “No, there is no Hell. He simply is no more.” 

                I wasn’t sure she heard me over her disconsolate lamenting. I hugged her and let her cry herself out. I had no idea how long we held each other. Possibly for decades. 

            “Thy will be done,”she finally managed to say. “You know how I used to explain to you about how the Garden of Eden story was an allegory of God giving humans free will to choose good or evil?” 

            “Yes, but it never really occurred to me that poor Benji had much will at all, let alone free will. Why did God give him such a bad heart…or whatever it was that made him so different from us, from the girls?” 

            “He chose, Larry. We gave him everything he needed to make better choices. Do you remember that long, awful night in the kitchen when he was only 14 and the juvenile officer brought him home from that joy-ride he had gone on? How we sat him down and tried to make him listen to us about how he was ruining his life? All those nights. We tried our best, Larry. By the time he was 17 you must remember how we told each other that we had lost control over him. All I had left was hope. Now that’s completely gone.” 

            “What do we do now?” It was a rhetorical question. There was nothing we could do about Ben. As his father, there had been many times that I had felt like giving up on him, but I kept trying until he chose to cut us out of his life. 

            “We keep him alive in our hearts and memories and never degrade ourselves with regret or blame.” 

            That was a typical Suzanne answer. Even when Ben had told us to stop visiting him in prison because he despised us, she simply blessed him and shed no tears until we were driving away. Now it was really time for us to think of the many positives before us. We were, after all, in Heaven. 

            “Well, Suzanne, we have a lot to look forward to. We are, after all, in Heaven. Our children and their children will join us eventually so we have that to rejoice over.” 

            She smiled that beatific smile that had made me fall involve with her in the first place. “So tell me about Heaven.” 

            I told her all that I had learned, then we went to find her parents, her brothers, and my family. I was so happy to have her with me, for I had begun to wonder what I was going to do with all of eternity to spend. There was more to it than spending time with family and friends, although that was always wonderful. We both noticed that without money, time or material worries, social activities were always very joyous. No one suffered from envy or greed. Still, much of what made such get togethers fun was talking about life’s ups and downs: births, deaths, graduations, promotions and so on. None of that mattered now and talking about what had already happened would soon get very tiresome. We all needed new things to do and challenges to discuss. Suzanne and I talked it over a lot both between us and with our families. 

            We agreed that we needed to find something that we could eventually do with others, that would give us a huge range of possibilities, that we would both enjoy and that would bring pleasure to others beyond those we did it with. Thus, visiting places, taking pictures, reading, and painting were out. Dancing was a possibility, but I never had liked it, let alone been good at it. Cooking? That was unnecessary here. Singing, maybe, but not just singing. 

            “We can’t be the first ones to face this problem,” Suzanne said. “Have you checked with your family or friends to see what they’ve done?” 

            “Yes, in fact, I have, but the answer was always the same: I—we—had to figure this out for ourselves because what made someone else happy was not the key. It was matter of self-discovery.” 

            “Well, you’ve forgotten how to be a student. Did you ask them about a process for figuring it out?”

             “I think it’s still the same answer. We need to figure out our own process.” 

                Ideally it would be something we actually both thought we might be good at without resorting to the spiritual powers we had, at least not too much. It would be something that we could do with others, that others would like to do with us, including all of our families if it came to that. It would be something that would bring pleasure to others even if they were not directly involved. It would be music. 

            We would learn music. This was something we had always both wanted to do, but never had the time or money. We wanted to learn not just how to sing or play one instrument. We would learn how to play every musical instrument ever invented. We would need to learn how to read music, then found that most instruments had their own notations. Well fine. I started with the piano, thinking it was the hardest. Then I learned the violin, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, guitar, and drums. That gave me a good grounding in Western instruments so I branched out to gamilans, sitars and kotos. Each instrument took me the equivalent of one to five “years” to master and I finally mastered over 250 instruments. There were easily ten times that many instruments ever invented, so I stopped at 250 when I realized that all the others were variations on the same ideas. For example, once I had mastered the standard six string classical guitar, the folk, electric, 12-string, pedal steel, etc., guitars were all very much the same, not to mention the banjo, ukulele and other stringed instruments with fret boards. Suzanne was not quite as ambitious, choosing only the piano and strings or all kinds, but she especially liked the harp. “And this has nothing to do with being an angel.” She said. 

            The singing part was easy. I was ecstatic over how well I had become able to sing as I had never had a very good voice in my mortal life. It made me wonder about the old stories about the voices of angels, for I thought my voice sounded wonderful and so did Suzanne’s, of course, in a higher register. Then I found out that everyone had this ability. I was not at all deflated, because I realized that we could form any kind of musical grouping, whether it was a symphony orchestra complete with choir, a jazz combo, a five person rock group or a gamelan band. We could get Beethoven, Duke Ellington or John Lennon to conduct or lead the group. Ravi Shankar could provide tips on the sitahr, Franz Liszt could play the virtuous part of a Mozart piano concerto, and Frank Sinatra could front a swing band. (Yes, Sinatra still had something no one else had.) Even with all the talent we had developed, some of these people had special gifts that they retained in Heaven. 

            It was something I had never conceived of. There we were singing a Bach hymn under the tutorship of Johann Sebastian himself. I was jamming in a guitar duel with my idol Neil Young. Suzanne was discussing the subtleties of playing the shamisen with Miyazono Senju. History had created so many gifted musicians across all cultures and they were almost all here. (Richard Wagner was a notable exception.) Most of them I had never heard of, but then how was I to learn of a great Australian didgeridoo player or a Basque musician who lived in prehistoric times and invented the precursor of the guitar? The best part of this music was that there was an infinite number of combinations that we could create. It seemed to me that this was as good a meaning as could be found to pass eternity. Perhaps humans could have come to creating a community of the world by themselves, but as we all came to realize, what we had here was just such community. 

            Think of it. Both communication and travel were instantaneous, so connecting with anyone at any time was simple. If someone was occupied, there was no “hurry” until they had time. It was also little trouble for the most popular people to meet with several thousand people at once, as long as the questions and comments were similar enough. For example, if someone wanted to learn how to box from Muhammad Ali he could demonstrate his style to a huge number of souls at once by projecting himself into them. Everyone could share anything with everyone else. So even as we shared our music with other groups or non-musical audiences, we benefited from drama, stories, art, and dance from other groups. 

            Suzanne and I learned a critical lesson, even as we often dwelled on the loss of our son. Even as on Earth, it was harder to appreciate the times of joy without the contrast of sorrow, so it was here, but magnified. We were so much more appreciative of how wonderful our afterlife was whenever we paused to remember Benjamin and how much we would have wanted him to be here, if only he had made better choices. We did not blame ourselves for his failures. We ceased to play the game of “If only we had done…” We took the time to recall the early years when Ben brought us laughter and even those times when we had a moment of caring for us to let us know he was not all bad. We looked at all the love we did have surrounding us and envied no one. 

            And thus it came to pass that all of the people we had known on earth joined us and millions of others after that. Then after some time untold and unknown and unnecessary to be known, the numbers coming gradually decreased until there were none. The apocalypse had come, not with fire, flood, or pestilence, but slowly until all of us on the planet that we now knew as Heaven. We looked upon it and saw that it was good, for there was no us or them anymore we were all One with All, while being unto ourselves each as we would have it. A paradox? Yea, but ye know not yet God.