How is it being dead? I guess what I mean is—how is heaven? I still believe there is
such a place, and furthermore you’re there. So how is it? How about a Yelp review?
My visions of heaven were whipped up early built from the book of Revelation’s
golden city with jasper walls accented by Baptist flair which included a mansion
(personal) just over the hilltop where rejoicing and shouts of victory there will be. And
while the old Book expressly says there will be no marriage in heaven, the feeling in
the room was Yes, it does say that, but I still believe I’ll be reunited with my sweet Bill (snif).
Some of that childishness I’ve tried to put away as a man. But some things do die hard.
I caught a video clip earlier this week where writer Anne Lamott said she’s not afraid
of dying, describing heaven as “just a significant change of address…I hope I get a seat
close to the dessert table.” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, or puke. God save us
all from such an anemic, b&w version of heaven. Might as well go one more and pipe
in 24/7 worship played by Anne Geddes angel-babies staged on marshmallow clouds.
Please say it ain’t so, Jim. Please say it’s more like Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven” -
And then I’m gonna get a cocktail/Vodka and ginger ale/Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s 9 miles long/I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl/on the tilt-a-whirl/’cause this old man is goin’ to town…
Maybe not exactly that, but at least that one’s got blood in it, that’s my kind of heaven.
If I had to guess, I’m hoping your Yelp review would have hints of Michigan’s U.P. and
Montana’s Paradise Valley and Arizona’s southern border complete with thickets and
rivers and dogs and ravens with the whiff of American Spirits awash in gallons of
Cotes du Rhone and, if I know anything about you, breasts and lips and thighs and
hips…in other words, not some significant change of address but a world just like this
one but born again in a Technicolor dream, a world with dew still on it, bursting with
pretty girls and tilt-a-whirls and the faces and voices and embraces of those we loved
and lost but luckily found again, an afterlife crammed daily with laughter and chatter
until the dusk rises and the whole world stops to listen as the evening train goes by.
I do hope you’re having fun, old man. I hope, as the song says, you’re goin’ to town.
*photo credit - Scott Baxter