During a surgical procedure, I died for awhile, went through that famous tunnel of light and ran into God, who greeted me at the Pearly Gates.
“Are you hungry,” he asked?
“I could eat,” I replied.
He opened a can of tuna, unwrapped a loaf of white bread, and we began to share it. While eating the humble sandwich, I looked down into Hell and saw the inhabitants devouring lobsters, vegetables, fresh breads, desserts.
Curious, but deeply trusting, I remained quiet.
The next day, God invited me to join him again for a meal. And again, it was tuna on white. I looked down and once more, could see the denizens of Hell enjoying salmon, rice, veggies, apple pie.
Still, I said nothing.
The following day, mealtime arrived and another can of tuna was opened. I couldn’t contain myself any longer. Meekly, I asked, “God, I am grateful to be in heaven with you as a reward for the pious, obedient, devotional life I led. But here in heaven, all I get is tuna on white bread, and in the other place they eat like emperors and kings! I just don’t understand it.”
God looked at me and sighed: “Let’s be honest. For two people, it just doesn’t pay to cook.”
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That joke reminds me of something that happened when I was about nine years old.
I’d been attending religious classes (I won’t say which denomination; not trying to pick on any one belief, only the concepts that come along with them.) and had been told one day that anyone who hadn’t accepted my own faith and beliefs would burn in hell. Literally.
I was a kid and of course, immediately thought about my daddy. Although he’d allowed all seven of us to be raised in my mother’s religion, he, himself, was not a true believer.
Horrified about this news of his eternal fate, after class ended I went to the woman teaching and asked hopefully, “Are you sure about this?” as I explained to her my father’s impending doom.
“I’m very sorry,” was her solemn but firm reply.
Can you believe the stuff we tell kids in the name of “G-O_D?” Well, sure you can. It’s a topic of endless conversation and in most cases, we’re so shocked at what other religions tell their young, but rarely mortified by our own beliefs because “ours are the right ones.”
I went home that day after class and found my barrell-chested 6 foot tall father taking a nap on his bed. Seizing the moment, I got a glass of water and crept in quietly toward the snoring figure before me.
I’d been instructed during religious lessons to perform a particular ritual of salvation, to be used on someone near death who showed no telltale signs of being of my faith. Although he was not at all on his last legs, I figured when it came to “Dad,” why wait any longer? I was, in fact, now a bonafide savior, all 50 pounds of me. My view was, heck, I may as well get going with all that!
Leaning over his body, I sprinkled some of the “holy” liquid onto my father’s forehead. Up he sprang, startled, of course.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hollered, as my legs flew out from under me, scrambling quickly to get out the door.
We never spoke about it again.
When he was in a hospital dying, decades later, my mother called the clergyman from the local church, a place I hadn’t set foot in for many years. She just wanted to give my dad one more chance to do what she very sincerely believed would take him to his final reward, to those gates of pearl.
(Just one question here: if there are gates, there must be walls and if walls, are they to keep people from getting in or getting out?. That part was never made clear…)
So while my father was lying fairly comfortably on his deathbed (watching the Pistons vs. Lakers in the play-offs that year, as I recall), the man from the church came walking down the hall toward us. He went alone into the room and spent over an hour there.
When he emerged smiling he said to my mom, “Your husband is fine. He doesn’t need me. I learned a lot just listening to him.”
My mother felt the truth in those infinitely comforting words. She held her husband’s hands the next day, speaking in his ear as he peacefully slipped out of that big strong body of his. She told me later she thought she may have gone with him part of the way. She said she saw angels.
Sounded good to me.
All I know is when I got there, moments after his last breath, my father was gone and the look on his face was that of a sleeping child; no more lines or creases, no pain, no worry. He looked like someone feeling quite heavenly in fact.
I guess my little water trick worked after all.
