Death and Stories

I haven’t written for a while. My father died a week ago on Thursday, and I feel so tired. I don’t understand it because my dad was 86, and I’m almost 60. It’s not a shocking death. I wake up every morning from nightmares that seem to have nothing to do with my dad, and then I realize there will be no fresh stories about my dad. There will be the old stories, and that’s it.

I haven’t cried for my father. I didn’t cry for my mother either. When my father figure, Les, died, I didn’t cry either. Or when my best friend Celia died. I seem pretty stoic in the face of death, unless I am asleep and my mind explores the afterlife.

Most of the time, I don’t believe in any afterlife. (This does not mean I don’t believe in a Divine Presence.) If there’s an afterlife, we are swirling energies in the universe that — um, contribute to the Akashic records? Sing the music of the spheres? I don’t think we lived this life as humans so that we could live as humans somewhere else.

When someone close to me dies, however, I want to believe in that paradise, and I clutch to myself the imagery of a big old house and a party where all the people I have ever been fond of show up. There are joyful reunions, even between those who have never met. We fill the house with hugs and laughter.

I go to the kitchen to help cook because I feel overwhelmed by the noise and the hugs; it’s something I often do. I turn to the woman cooking — she’s tall and bountiful — and ask if I can help cook. “No, go out there. It’s your party.” As I go out, I realize that it’s everyone’s party, because this is Heaven and this is God.

I fear death. Not the inevitable emptiness itself; I worry about the knowledge just before one dies, the certainty that there will be no next minute, no stories to tell. Yet it’s the only scenario that stands up after examination, after questions of “Who gets admitted in?” and “Aren’t they going to get bored?” That and the humanized energies scenario discussed above.

We die and are returned to ash. Our stories live beyond us, until those carriers, too, die. This is what makes me cry.

Heaven and a Cup of Coffee

“I feel like I’ve died and gone to Heaven.”

I thought about the phrase this morning while drinking the best cup of coffee my husband’s ever made, and I wondered what that would actually be like. I know that different people’s notions of heaven differ, but many of them seem to look like life on Earth except, maybe, with less material goods, more leisure, and more happiness*.

If this is Heaven, I can’t help but think I will have feelings other than joy and a deep contentment. I’ll have left all these people I know and a life I’ve stated as “pretty darn good”. Won’t I mourn my lost life? Won’t that perfect cup of coffee make a poignant reminder of my mornings on Earth?

Wouldn’t I get tired of my perfect coffee every day? Part of what I love about our coffee in the morning is the fact that my husband and I order the varieties we want to try, Richard (husband) roasts the beans, and we critique the resulting brew. Wouldn’t we lose something if the coffee wasn’t of our production?

So I think of Heaven, and I worry a bit. Because if Heaven is that perfect cup of coffee, I’m afraid I would be bored before long.

***************

* Less materialism seems to be a predictor of happiness on Earth as well, so there might be something to this vision.

**My notion of Heaven is that I will become a traveling soul with consciousness that can zip across Heaven and Earth at the speed of a thought. As I travel, I will quickly lose more and more memory of the material of Earth, and I will only be a force for good.

Musing about the Rainbow Bridge

Right now, I’m sitting in bed coming down with something. A cold, the flu, my imagination — I’m not sure. I barely notice the clutter — the clothes racks that substitute for a closet, the pile of stuffed toys on the cedar chest, bins of summer clothes — but I do notice the round black-and-white cat who cleans herself at the foot of the bed. Stinkerbelle, after a long period of antisocial behavior, has settled into her second kittenhood at age 11, where she clings to me and occasionally cleans my face.

What does Stinkerbelle dream of? She’s a simple creature — she likely dreams of food. Lots of food. And enough petting that she actually gets tired of it. Maybe she dreams of playing, because her arthritic hips no longer will let her do so. They give her trouble merely walking, and jumping on the bed requires three tries now.

Maybe she contemplates the Rainbow Bridge. All pets go to the Rainbow Bridge when they die. When they cross the Bridge into the endless meadow, all their infirmities of life are somehow made irrelevant. They can run, they can play, they can see. The rain that bathes the plants somehow doesn’t drench their fur, so they can run in the raindrops.

At the Rainbow Bridge, they thrive until their owners come, and when we arrive, they remember us and escort us to the endless meadow. I wonder about the dogs and cats who were never adopted, and I’d like to think that some of us pet lovers would adopt them there.

Somehow, we owners think we’re going to Heaven or Hell and our pets think we’re going to the Rainbow Bridge to meet them. Maybe the Rainbow Bridge leads to Heaven. But remember — all pets go to heaven. Have we created in our imagination a better afterlife for pets than we have for ourselves?

Nurturing Spaces

Somewhere, there exists a perfect coffeehouse. The light is soothing, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. It is paneled in warm wood, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. It has local art on the walls, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. The espresso is rich with thick crema and a twist of lemon, and a piece of dark chocolate on the side, NOTHING like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. In the perfect coffeehouse, I can crawl in bleary-eyed after a day of writing and feel like I’m home, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in.

I think I’ve made myself clear about the coffeehouse I currently sit in.

One of the great things about being a writer is that I can create nurturing spaces that I can’t find in real life, spaces that literally make me weepy-eyed. A kitten pile on a warm wood floor, a cottage in a place called Heaven, a coffeehouse where I can be completely unselfconscious, a toy shop where a young Kris Kringle builds wooden toys. A rainy alley where two people kiss for the first time, an attic where the sun shines in through a window, an auditorium with perfect acoustics.

If I encountered my imagination in real life, I would wonder if I was in heaven, which means I’d wonder if I was dead, and whether the afterlife would be a place where I literally walked through my imagination. That wouldn’t be bad as long as I didn’t indulge the darker parts of my imagination.