1
Hank Alderfer was confused. He couldn’t imagine where he was. His first thought was that he must be having a dream. But he didn’t ever remember having a dream and knowing it was a dream until after he awoke. Whatever was happening, it was certainly like nothing he had ever experienced before. He seemed not to be able to feel his body, yet he could see himself. He could see his hands and arms, and he could move them, but when he brought his hands together they passed through one another without any resistance. He thought he should feel scared, but he did not.
He had the sensation of moving rapidly through a corridor. All seemed black to him, yet he thought there must be light somewhere because he could see his own body clearly. His senses told him there simply had to be light, but he could find no source. He then thought that he himself must be the source of light. Maybe his body was glowing in the dark.
He was totally naked. Even his wristwatch and crucifix were gone. Then he noticed that his skin was flawless. There was no scar on his right arm from the plowing accident. He saw no birthmark on his left foot. And there was no hair on his arms or legs. There was no hair anywhere. And then he realized that he had no real coloration either. His body was white and gray. There were no flesh tones. There were no colors anywhere he looked.
He realized next that he felt no pain, no discomfort, not even any urge to urinate. His senses of touch were gone. There was no hunger or thirst. He had form, but no substance. What was he? Where was he?
He remembered climbing aboard the tractor and then having the sharp pain in his arms and chest. He remembered falling from the tractor. But he could not remember anything beyond that. It was as if falling from the tractor was the last thing that ever happened to him. Then he thought that this must be a dream. He had probably passed out. But it just didn’t feel right. You simply don’t dream that you’re dreaming.
His mind began to drift in another direction. There was something else that he was just becoming aware of. It was like a sense of wellbeing. He felt no emotions at all. He wasn’t scared, or concerned, or angry. He was simply without emotions. He thought to himself. What were the five senses? Then he had a vivid memory of his fourth grade teacher speaking to the class about the five senses. Sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Then it hit him. They were gone. He had no senses except sight.
He tested his new theory. No, he couldn’t taste anything in his mouth. He couldn’t hear a sound, nor smell anything at all. But he definitely had sight. He looked all around and saw nothing but his own body, so he began to study it in better detail. He scanned his arms, and then his legs. He started with his right foot and scanned his shin and calf, his knee, his thigh.....He was startled to find that he had nothing between his legs. He had nothing at all there. He reached down to his crotch in a reflex reaction. His hand and arm just passed right through his body. Again the thought hit him that he had form without substance. Then he wondered how he could urinate if he had to. But he somehow knew that he would not have to.
The thought returned that it must be a dream, and he focused on his surroundings again. He couldn’t tell if he could propel his body. There was no visual point of reference. He worked his feet trying to spin in a circle, but he felt no sense of spinning or dizziness. There was no sense of gravity, either. He was certain that he was floating weightlessly. He then sensed something he had not sensed before. Were his eyes just playing tricks? No, he was sure he had seen it. It was a pinpoint of light, so small it seemed to disappear as he tried to look at it. He remembered a little trick he had learned somewhere in his past. He looked slightly away from the elusive dot of light and.....yes, he saw it for a brief moment again before it disappeared. Then he began shifting his gaze back and forth ever so slightly. It was an old night-vision trick a friend had taught him when they went camping in his youth. Yes, he could see it. It was definitely there, but he had no way of telling if it was close or far away.
He tried to walk toward it, but he felt futility. He just had no way to know if anything was happening at all. Then he concentrated on moving his body toward it, but it had no effect at all. The pinpoint of light was there, and he knew somehow that it was significant in some way. He remembered what frustration had felt like, and he expected now to begin feeling it. But, frustration did not occur. Then he got distracted again and he focused on his lack of senses. There was something else wrong, but he couldn’t pin it down. Something else besides the lack of senses and substance! He worked through it in his mind. Breathing! That was it! He realized he wasn’t breathing. And then he realized he didn’t feel a need to breathe. He tried to breathe, yet nothing happened. At first he prepared himself for panic, like the thoughts of a drowning man. But panic never came. He was intrigued now. He almost couldn’t imagine living without breathing, but here he was doing just that. Then for a split second he thought that perhaps he wasn’t alive, but he dismissed that thought at once. After all, this was just a dream.
He wondered how long he had been dreaming. He remembered something about dreams taking the same amount of time as if the events had happened while awake. But suddenly time was a strange concept to him. How could this be so? Time was time. Everything was tied to time. Past and future were concepts that had no meaning if not for time. Movement itself was described in terms of time. Yet, he could not now seem to understand time. He could not bring himself to find any point of reference for it. He felt no pulse, saw no watch hands, and he took no breaths. But he did have memory of time. He knew that his memories had chronology. He knew that boyhood memories preceded adult ones. Still, in the present, time was an elusive concept. It just didn’t seem to apply anymore.
There was something about time that he remembered reading once. It was an article in the Readers’ Digest, and it described time as a man-made dimension. It had seemed so silly and incomprehensible when he first read it. Time couldn’t be man-made. But here he was in some kind of dream world where time did not seem to exist.
He tried to re-focus on the one thing that was of real significance to him. There was a pinpoint of light in his strange new world, and he wanted to get closer to it and explore it. But how was he to do that? Then, he had an idea. He scanned with his eyes and again located the pinpoint of light. He began his night-vision trick, darting his eyes around the faint dot, and he worked his feet to try and turn around. The dot stayed in exactly the same position. In his mind that could mean only one thing. He wasn’t turning. He was not able to propel himself.
He wondered if he was interpreting things properly in this dream. Maybe the light was somehow attached to his body. Maybe he really was turning and the light was following along. It amazed him how hard it was to do a simple thing like figure out his orientation with respect to that point of light. He realized that he had to learn new ways of dealing with things. He had to find some point of reference to take the place of time and perception. He thought about it and couldn’t seem to figure out anything else to try. Then he just haphazardly focused on the light and tried all sorts of body movements. He twisted his torso, turned his head this way and that, bent over, and leaned back and forth. Nothing seemed to provide any meaningful information about his orientation with respect to the light.
He was running out of ideas. He decided that maybe he could simply end the dream at will. He told himself to wake up. He made a conscious effort to awaken himself from the dream. He tried to open his eyes even though they were open in the dream. Another realization hit him. He wasn’t blinking his eyes in this dream. He felt no urge or reflex to blink. But, he set that thought aside for the time being, and he began to concentrate as hard as he could on waking up. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
The entire situation was beyond him. He could not figure out how to do anything. He certainly knew this was a dream unlike any dream he had ever experienced in the past. His mind was racing now. He was recapping everything he had tried, frantically trying to figure out new things to try. It was like a game now. His mind seemed to be traveling at the speed of light. He was trapped inside a maze and exploring every avenue left open to him, and yet he felt none of the frustration that his conscious mind would have felt.
Then his thoughts stopped instantly. He felt a warm sense of wellbeing. He was simply floating in this vast unknown world. Just he and the point of light. He thought to himself that this was all so insane. Instead of trying so many different ways of getting to the light, he wished that the light would just come to him.....
There was an overwhelming jolt. He felt himself accelerate with more thrust than the wildest roller coaster he had ever ridden. He was thrown forward at such an incredible speed that his mind could not comprehend it. Yet there were no other physical sensations accompanying the acceleration. There was no wind in his face, and his arms and legs and head were not thrown back. It was as if his body was a rigid structure, yet he knew that this was not the case. This was turning out to be a stranger dream than he had imagined.
The light was directly in front of him. It was still just a tiny, faint point, but he no longer had to shift his eyes back and forth to see it. Was it getting brighter? Yes, he was getting closer to it. Or maybe it was getting closer to him. Whichever was the case, it suddenly made no difference to him at all. The light was getting brighter and brighter. It began to grow in size as well as intensity. As it continued to grow, the intensity became brighter than anything he had ever known. He felt as though he were being hurled into the sun itself, yet there was no feeling of heat associated with this intense light. Then it was upon him, and for one instant it was completely overpowering and blinding. He and the light were one.
2
Jack Casey was trying to figure out where the doctor had gone. He had just been standing there explaining to Jack how liver and kidney failure affected the body. He tried to be as forthright as possible with Jack. He had known him for many years, and he knew Jack was scared of dying. Jack had asked him to explain what was happening, and Doctor Jennings was trying to put everything into lay terms so Jack could understand. Jack was heavily sedated, so his fears were alleviated by his numbness. The doctor was explaining how the continued effects of excess alcohol eventually destroyed the liver and why it was irreversible. Then, like magic, he simply disappeared. No, everything disappeared.
Everything had gone dark. Jack’s first thought was that there must have been a power failure, but then he realized it was the middle of the day, and the sun had been shining in the hospital room window. He was in total and absolute darkness.....No! That wasn’t the case. He could see his own naked body. But, he hadn’t been naked. His pain was gone, also. Not alleviated, but gone; totally gone.
Jack studied his own body and its bizarre lack of color and definition. It occurred to him that he was just having a dream, but he dismissed that notion at once. Doctor Jennings was there in his room because Jack knew it was only a matter of minutes before he would die. His heartbeat had been erratic and weak, his breathing was labored, and delirium was setting in. Jack was feeling uneasy now. Somehow he knew he was dead. He had been preparing himself for death over the last three months. He had been certain that death would be the end of everything. All thought would cease and his body and brain would turn to maggot food. There was no God or Heaven! What was happening?
Where was he? Jack knew he could figure it out if he put his mind to it. He was smart...he was logical...he was a shrewd attorney and businessman. What bothered him the most was that he now knew he had been wrong about death. Everything didn’t just stop. Was he wrong about God, too? Then, if that were so, was it possible there really was a Heaven and Hell? Jack braced himself for a rush of fear, but it never came.
He could not seem to get the image of Hell out of his mind. He slipped right past the question of whether Hell existed, and he began to wonder what Hell would be like. He was floating in a vast blackness, feeling almost nothing, and from out of nowhere the lifeless face of Fred Stoner surrounded him. He tried to turn away from the image, but it followed wherever he looked. He hadn’t thought about Fred for ages, but now he couldn’t tear his mind away. Hell and the murder of his innocent friend were inseparable. He braced himself again and again for that onslaught of fear, but it just never came.
This was crazy. His logic told him that he should be scared to death of what was coming, but he somehow was devoid of emotion. For a moment it occurred to him that perhaps his lack of emotion might in itself be the basis for his own private Hell. But that didn’t make any sense to him, so he tried to pry his thoughts away from the subject. He directed his energy toward figuring out where he was and what was happening. He somehow felt that he was on a journey of sorts. He looked around and saw absolutely nothing. He turned his attention back to his own body. He felt detached from it, and he couldn’t quite understand the lack of feeling. Then he was suddenly aware of something coming rapidly toward him. He looked up and he saw the hideous distorted body of Fred Stoner running toward him with arms extended. Fred lunged at Jack and his hands were groping for Jack’s throat. Jack reacted instinctively. He ducked his head and twisted to one side as Fred’s trajectory carried his body directly over Jack’s head. Jack snapped around to prepare for Fred’s next attack, but Fred was gone. In bewilderment, Jack turned back to look behind him, but Fred was nowhere in sight. Jack thought to himself that it must just be his mind playing tricks on him. He relaxed his vigil and turned back around. To his astonishment, Fred’s body was lunging toward him again, but he didn’t quite have enough time to totally evade the threat. Fred’s extended hand caught Jack in the side of the face.......but Jack was once again astonished. He thought that he must have misjudged his or Fred’s speed. Somehow, Fred had not made contact at all. But he could have sworn that he....
Jack knew there was no time to waste. He had to prepare for battle. He snapped around to face Fred, and he was gone again. Jack was totally bewildered. How can someone just come and go like this? Not just someone, but a dead man. Jack was too confused to think straight. None of this made sense. He spun around in the darkness screaming, “Where are you, you son of a bitch?” But he heard no sound coming out of his own mouth. The confusion increased, and Jack spun around looking for his invisible enemy. And finally he screamed in silence, “Come to me, you lousy dead bastard.” Like a shock wave, he was hurled off in a sideward direction. His first thought was that Fred had crashed into him, but Fred was nowhere to be found.
Jack now spotted the small point of light in his path. He was approaching it rapidly - its intensity growing at an awesome rate. Whatever it was, there seemed to be no way of avoiding it. He braced himself for the impact as he stared straight ahead trying to make out what it was that he was about to collide with. But the collision never occurred. The light got so bright that he thought his eyes were burning out of their sockets. And then he was enveloped by it, and he was a part of it.
3
One moment Joan Spencer was driving along thinking about being the next Einstein, and then everything went dark. Her first reaction was that her sight had failed, and she instinctively stomped on the brake pedal. But there was no pedal. She dropped her head in a reflex movement, looking for an explanation to this peculiar set of circumstances, and she saw her naked body. A rapid series of questions went through her mind immediately. Where am I?...What happened?...Where are my clothes?...Where are mom and dad?...Am I okay?...What time is it?...Where’s my term paper?...Where’s the car?...Am I hurt?...
...She interrupted the helter-skelter thought process to take control of things. She looked around to assess her situation and saw that she was totally alone and in the dark. She saw that she had no clothes on. She looked to see what time it was, and realized her watch was gone. She was suddenly disoriented. She tried to focus herself on her senses but determined quickly that only her sight seemed to work. She wondered if she were paralyzed in some way. She moved her arms and legs and she discovered that it took no effort to do so. As she reached to feel her torso, she felt nothing and she watched in confusion as her hands and arms passed right through her body. Could she be dreaming this?
Then her body itself became the object of her investigation. She noticed she had no hair at all anywhere on her body. There was no polish on her fingernails. She realized that there was no coloration anywhere. Then she carefully looked all around her and studied the total blackness. She wondered how she could see her own body if there were no light anywhere. Then she looked back at her body, drawing her hands together near her breasts. She moved her hands over one another, and even through one another, and saw that there were no shadows of any sort. Her science-disciplined mind told her that her body was its own source of light. She was glowing in the dark. But she knew this was impossible. Then another thought went through her mind. She repeated the last movement of her hands, thinking that perhaps there might be a source of ultraviolet light around her. Her eyes would not be able to see it directly, but it might illuminate her body through fluorescence. But her scientific mind rejected that theory right away because there still would have been shadows. She had to stop again and regroup her thoughts.
She decided to reconstruct her movements just before the darkness struck. She remembered driving to the library. She was going to make a copy of her Physics term paper. She was driving down Preston Street. Then she remembered passing the donut shop. That would have been Walnut Street. She remembered seeing the Mobil station, too. That put her at Preston and Main. That was it. That was the last thing she could remember.
A new thought entered her mind. She must be unconscious. Was she dreaming? Was she comatose? Could she have fainted? She tried to pinch herself, forgetting for a moment what she had previously observed, and her right hand passed through her left forearm. That did it. Now she was getting annoyed. But it struck her that somehow she wasn’t getting annoyed enough. The situation called for alarm, but she felt no real sense of alarm. The situation was scary, wasn’t it? But, she didn’t feel scared. “That’s it!,” she proclaimed. She didn’t hear her own voice. “What the hell?” Again she heard nothing, but her keen mind suddenly made a whole series of scientific observations. She felt no air...She wasn’t breathing...She was weightless...There was no gravitational force...She felt none of the emotions she expected to feel...She was in a scary situation, but wasn’t scared...She heard no sound at all...She detected no heartbeat...She felt no pain...She felt nothing...Her body had no substance...She wasn’t blinking...She couldn’t close her eyes...
She assessed the observations. It could only be her subconscious at work. It must be a dream or something like that. She wondered how she could prove it was a dream. Could she control her own thoughts during a dream? There must be some scientific way to do this! How does one wake up from a dream? Then something occurred to her. She remembered once dreaming she was rolling over a cliff, and then waking up to find she had fallen out of bed. She decided to try it.
She imagined herself lying by a precipice. She concentrated on making her body roll toward the cliff. Roll...Roll...Roll...She was rolling, and the cliff was right there...and over she went. She didn’t wake up. Then she realized that she didn’t let herself hit the ground. That’s what she should have done! She decided to go through it all once more, but this time to let herself continue through the fall until she hit the ground. She imagined herself again near the cliff. She began to roll...She was over the cliff...She imagined the fall...She visualized the ground approaching...She saw the jagged, rocky surface she was going to land on...She crashed face down onto the rocks...
Nothing! She tried it two more times, each time changing the scenario from that of the previous fall. Still she could not wake up. She decided to abandon that tack. She remembered once dreaming that she was urinating and then waking up to find she had wet the bed. It was worth a try, at least. But when she tried, she came to the realization that she could not even imagine an urge to urinate.
She immediately switched over to the scientific observation mode. She leaned over and looked at her crotch. She realized that the whole area was smooth and continuous. The thought went through her mind that she didn’t even have the equipment to pee with. That explained why she couldn’t imagine urinating. She looked at her breasts. There were no nipples. Her mind raced again, trying somehow to process this latest data. She was sexless. Was this just part of the dream?
Joan Elizabeth Spencer was running out of ideas. She should have been angry with herself, but she wasn’t. She didn’t seem to care. Was that possible? None of this made any sense to her, and confusion was not something she was accustomed to. She took an imaginary deep breath and concentrated on coming up with new ideas. A thought began working its way into her mind. It was almost as if it were not originating within her own mind, but somehow entering on its own accord. (the intersection) She tried to focus on the thought (the intersection), but it was evasive. (the intersection) It felt peculiar to her. She knew there was something there, yet she knew she had to wait for it to come to her. (the intersection) It was like waiting for a bus. There was nothing she could do but wait for it to arrive. (the intersection) It was a familiar thought. It was beginning to take shape in her mind...
Pow! She knew the significance immediately as the image formed in her brain. The intersection of Preston and Main. The Mobil station wasn’t the last thing she remembered. She could see the traffic light clearly now. She could see it coming closer. She saw it passing up over the windshield as she approached the intersection. Her peripheral vision picked up the truck on her left side. The light was red! It was red...red...red...red...red...
Joan’s memory unlocked its last few secrets. The truck had smashed into her broadside. Her body got slammed up against the left side of the car. Her faced got squashed against the door glass. The steering wheel crushed through her chest and everything flashed bright white in front of her eyes...
...Joan didn’t need to remember any more than that. She looked at her naked body. The chest wasn’t crushed. Of course it wasn’t. She understood now that it was not a body at all, but only a vestige of conscious memory. It was just a symbol of substance. A form to accompany the memories that still continued after...after...
She tried to postpone the thought, but it seemed to force its own way out. She knew at once that she was dead.
Now she had a whole new set of questions to answer...Was she in Limbo?... Was she in Heaven?...Was she in Hell?...What would happen to her?...Was God here?...Did God exist?...
She switched back to the role of observer. This time she examined her surroundings from a different perspective. Knowing she was dead, she had to figure out where she was. She wasn’t even certain that the term “where” had any meaning. She knew that her body was an apparition. But why was that necessary? How could consciousness remain after death? She set her mind to explaining these mysteries.
Her thought processes were scientifically structured. She could use pure logic and reason to systematically get to the truth. And she had that wonderful gift that not many people shared, the power of abstract thought. She began her way through the thought process.....
She started with the basic knowledge that she was dead, whatever dead meant. The toughest part of the process was dealing with the fact that death was not the end of consciousness. Once she got past the acceptance of that point, the rest was easy for her. She deduced that, if the consciousness lives on, a purpose must exist. Since form existed in the consciousness, the purpose must involve some perception of dimension. That meant that the purpose involved a place of some sort, perceived or real. The place was not where she was, so it must be elsewhere. Then, either she must transport herself to the place, or the place must transport itself to her. In the abstract sense, she knew that either choice was identical. She also knew that purpose meant intelligence, and she knew that the intelligence must be on a plane greater than mankind. She knew that there must be a God or Gods. And she knew that it served no purpose to remain where she was or to continue with her reasoning. God was the highest concept that mankind could understand.
Now she knew exactly what had to be done. She spoke into the silence of her consciousness, “Thy will be done.” And Joan Spencer was transported.
4
Raymond Williams accepted death. He somehow knew that the stories he had heard must have some merit. He knew he had to go toward the light.
The pain was suddenly gone from his chest. Jasmine’s form simply disappeared as she was reaching for his hand. He was overwhelmed by a sense of relief and contentment. He could still see his outstretched hand waiting to touch his beloved wife’s hand, but all else was darkness. His skin glowed, giving off an eerie, white light. He noticed that he no longer wore his hospital ID bracelet. He no longer wore anything. The sudden release of pain made him immediately aware that he was floating. As he looked around, he saw absolutely nothing. He couldn’t get his bearings. He experienced a brief moment when he thought he was spinning around like a top, but the feeling disappeared as suddenly as it had come.
His thoughts turned to Jasmine. He felt a strong surge of sadness coming on, but it didn’t come. Then he reassured himself that he had gotten all of his affairs in order before he died. He knew he no longer had to concern himself with the world of the living.
His attentions turned to the business at hand. He had to go toward the light. But, what light? He moved his head and eyes in a panoramic scan of his surroundings. There was nothing to be seen except himself. He thought to himself that this couldn’t be right. There had to be a light out here somewhere. Then it occurred to him that he himself was the only light source to be found. That puzzled him a bit. Was he supposed to go toward himself? What sense did that make? Almost automatically, he reached up to scratch his head. His hand passed right through. “Jesus,” he said. At least, he thought he said it. He heard nothing when he spoke, so he tried again and got the same result. But he decided he was going to speak anyway, even if nobody could hear. Speaking was the best way to keep his thoughts straight.
“Jesus, are you out here someplace?” he asked. “It’s me, Raymond Williams, and I just died. I’m trying to find you, Lord, but I don’t see anything.” He turned his head, as though that might help him be heard. “What am I supposed to do out here?”
He started to think about his predicament. All of his powers of reason seemed to be failing him. He just couldn’t accept the fact that there was no light. He had played the scene out so many times in his mind before he died. It was always so easy, and always the same. He would just suddenly appear in this long corridor, see the light, and walk over to it. So, what was he supposed to do now?
“All right, then,” he declared. “I’m just gonna have to think this one through a bit. There can’t be anything special you gotta know to die, can there?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that even as he asked it. “Lord, with your help I’ll figure this thing out and I won’t have to waste any more of your time.”
He decided to survey things a bit more carefully than he had before. “I gotta hold my arms down while I look for the light. The light must be real far from here, and the glow coming off of me must be making it hard to see.” He remembered how he could never see the stars when he was near the front porch light, and this light he had to find might be no brighter than those stars were.
He scanned the entire area. Twice he thought he caught a faint glimmer of light, but both times he was mistaken. Or was he? He remembered something from a TV show he had seen. It was about the human eye. Something about “dead spots” on the retina. He thought he should scan again, and this time he should circle the area a few times with his eyes if he even thought he saw a distant twinkle.
He scanned the area slowly while he mumbled to himself. “Where are you, light? You gotta be out there someplace. I’ll find you if you’re out there.” He scanned the entire area and saw nothing. But he didn’t feel impatient, even though he thought he should. So he scanned again and again. On his fifth or sixth try, he found the faintest distant twinkle and turned to face it squarely. It was so faint that half the time he couldn’t see it. Was it just his imagination? No, he didn’t think it was. “Dear Lord, I found you.” In his mind’s eye he clearly saw the distant twinkle as the headlights of God’s bus coming to pick him up for his trip to Heaven. “I’m waiting for you, Lord. If I can’t go to you, I guess you gotta come to me.”
The “bus” seemed to approach faster than he expected. He just watched patiently as the “headlights” got brighter and brighter. Then he had the sudden realization that it wasn’t a bus at all. He had never in his wildest dreams imagined a light so bright as this one. It was still pretty far away, only barely larger than a distant star, but the intensity was incredible. He felt like he was looking at the sun through a telescope. He expected it to hurt his eyes, but he felt no pain or discomfort at all. He glanced down at his own body for a moment, just to make sure that he wasn’t going blind from the light. There was no image burned into his vision like there sometimes was after a glance at the sun or a flashbulb. Somehow this light didn’t desensitize his vision. He directed his eyes back to the light and could hardly believe how much brighter it had become in the second or two that he looked away. He felt a strange sensation all of a sudden. It was like the light stopped coming toward him, and he was now thrust forward toward it.
As the light seemingly sucked him in, Ray rejoiced and shouted into the soundless depths, “Hallelujah!”
5
Ann Willis was screaming in agony from the flames enveloping her body. She inhaled the scorching flames and felt the burning of her lungs inside her. She could think only of saving her precious new baby girl, her sweet Debbie.
But, just as suddenly as it happened, it was over. She was confused and disoriented. Where was Debbie? No, Debbie wasn’t a baby. Debbie was all grown up. What had she been thinking? The pain was gone. What happened? Fire! It was fire. It was in her lungs exploding like it exploded outside of her. She was in the kitchen, wasn’t she?
She sorted out the details the best she could. She remembered going to the door and coming back to the kitchen. She lit a match....
“The gas!” she exclaimed. “It was the damned pilot again.” But how could the pain be so severe? She thought that she must have inhaled the gas before she lit the match, and....yes that had to be it. It literally felt like she exploded from inside her lungs. But why doesn’t it hurt?
She remembered that she had covered her face with her hands, and she couldn’t move. She was on the floor, and the pain was so severe. How could anything have hurt that much....
She suddenly thought back to the pain. But it was gone now. She didn’t understand. She realized that she was still holding her hands in front of her face. She was covering her eyes, yet she could see light. She pulled her hands back away from her face and stared out into the blackness of.....
The blackness of what? Where was she? Was she in a hospital? What was going on? “Ted,” she called. Or at least she thought she called him. She didn’t hear her own voice. She called out again, but she couldn’t even feel her voice inside. She felt no air escaping from her throat. She felt no air at all. She wasn’t breathing. There was no air to breathe. She thought for a second and realized she didn’t feel a need to breathe. But it should have been an involuntary reflex. She knew that breathing was a reflex, damn it!
And why was there suddenly no pain? She remembered the stew. She had to make the stew. Ted would be home soon. No, this is crazy. Where was she?
Her mind was traveling a million miles an hour. She was certain that she was completely losing it. She couldn’t stop thinking. Then it suddenly struck her that she could see. She had to figure out where she was.
She turned her attention to her surroundings. She looked all around, finding nothing but her own body suspended somehow in mid-air. But her body was naked and distorted. She was pale and gray. Even her breasts...No these weren’t her breasts. She scanned her entire body more closely and saw all of the lack of definition and the.....Was she a plastic doll? She looked like an undressed Barbie doll. Yes, that’s exactly what she looked like! But she had no sense of herself being there. It was so strange. Then she reached to touch herself and.....No, this can’t be! “Ted, please help me.” Again there was no voice...no sound at all...no air...no body.
Her brain was in total overload. She felt that she might faint….no….she reasoned that she might faint. She felt nothing. She was in a world where nothing made any sense at all. It was all dreamy and distorted and nondescript. Then, with some confidence, she decided that this just wasn’t real. This was a dream. She would wait until she awoke and then deal with things from that point. She decided that she wasn’t going to waste any more time dreaming. She thought for a moment and realized that she couldn’t control what she was going to do from within a dream. What kind of dream can this be?
This just wasn’t working for her. She knew she was a bright woman. She was not going to let this get the best of her. She was not a Barbie doll, despite what her eyes revealed to her. It was time to figure this out logically and calmly. She would just start back at the beginning and sort it all out. There had to be some logical explanation. If it somehow turned out to be a dream, or a nightmare, then so be it. Who cared if you wasted energy in a dream? It didn’t matter, did it?
She chose to begin at the point she entered the house with all the packages. Now she would simply reconstruct everything step by step. Yes, that was the way to handle this. That’s how a man would do it....She was suddenly stunned by that last thought. Had she really thought that? She couldn’t believe it. How a man would do it?
She thought it all out slowly and precisely. She was amazed by how vivid and detailed her memory was. She reconstructed her route through to the dining room and into the kitchen. Carefully she traced her steps through the gathering of the ingredients for the stew. She remembered turning on the gas, and then she remembered the doorbell. Then it was back to the kitchen, the cigarette and the match. She paused to consider the issue of time. How long had the gas been on? Could it have been long enough to explode the whole kitchen? The doorbell! Yes, she had to somehow measure the time from the doorbell to the striking of the match. She remembered in detail how she opened the front door expecting someone to be there. Nobody was there, and she thought it might be a prank. She stepped outside, didn’t she? Yes, she did. She stepped outside and looked both ways. She saw nobody, and she was convinced that it was a neighbor boy playing a trick on her. How could she have forgotten such a detail the first time through? But, that wasn’t important now. How long had it been? How long was she outside?
She remembered looking back and seeing the flyer in the mail slot. No! First she ran and had a look at the side of the house, and then back to look at the other side. She had seen nobody, and she was sure it was a prank. That is, until she noticed the flyer in the mail slot. What did the flyer say? Oh, yes, it was an ad from the realty company. That’s when she knew it wasn’t a prank. But, wait! It was drizzling and part of the flyer was sticking out, and it was wet. Oh, God, what does this have to do with anything? She concentrated and got herself back on track. She did read the whole flyer. She was just finishing reading it when she got into the kitchen. Then she took out the matches....No, she took out the cigarette, then the matches. She pulled the match from the book and closed the cover.....she always closed the cover...Oh, Ann, please stick to the point!....She struck the match, and...
She had to tally up the time. She went through it all one more time, assigning an estimated time to each step of the way. When she was done, she came up with almost four minutes. Was that possible? But, was four minutes enough time for the gas to fill the room? She thought about this in more detail. She remembered that the pilot had gone out several times before. She remembered when Ted was in the kitchen that one time when she turned on the burner and noticed that it didn’t light. She lit a match that time and there was a small explosion that singed her eyebrows. Ted went crazy and called her every word in the book for stupid! He even lectured her about what to do if the pilot went out. Shut off the gas and open the window! But how long was the gas on that time? She was certain that it was only fifteen or twenty seconds....A half minute maximum. Oh, God. She realized what four whole minutes could do. She started to reprimand herself, but stopped. What was the point?
Focus, Ann! Focus! She had to assess what had happened to her. The kitchen must have been filled with gas. She didn’t smell it. She should have smelled it, though. Didn’t Ted say they put something in it to make it smell really bad? She realized that she must have taken a breath or two of the gas before she lit the match. The explosion! She had to concentrate on the explosion. No, there were two explosions! She got knocked down, right to the floor. Then she felt the pain, and the flames. She could feel the flames. She remembered she wanted to scream. She started to take a deep breath so she could scream out, and the flames were there. She inhaled the flames. She felt the second explosion from within her. It was like someone had punched her in the chest from the inside......
She paused with the realization of what had happened to her. She thought for certain that she would collapse from the ordeal of re-living these horrible events, but she wasn’t exhausted at all. It was beginning to make sense to her. She knew what had happened. She knew she could not have survived it. She stared straight out into the blackness of wherever she was. And that moment she knew for certain that she was dead. But, the most remarkable realization was that it didn’t bother her.
She wondered what would happen now. Was this it? Did death just mean floating around in darkness with a Barbie doll, glow-in-the-dark body? This required some additional thought.
She pondered her fate for a while. God should be involved somewhere, shouldn’t he? Was there a God? Worse yet, was there a Devil? She thought back to those scary days as a young girl in church. The minister scared her so badly with his talk of burning in Hell. She had so many nightmares about it. But, it didn’t matter! She had to get a grip on herself. She was not going to Hell. She was going to Heaven. But how? Where was Heaven? Where was God?
This would take some sorting out. She had to concentrate. She tried to move. She tried walking and reaching out with both arms. But she couldn’t see anything or feel anything. Was she moving or not? There just wasn’t anything to look at to know if she was moving. A point of reference. Yes, that’s what it’s called. She had to find a point of reference. She looked all around and could see nothing but her own Barbie figure. She thought to herself that she must be missing something. There had to be something to see, or some way to go, or.....
Heaven and God captured her thoughts. God was supposed to be here for her now. Her next life was starting, and it was supposed to be spent in the Kingdom of God. This can’t be it. This just can’t be it. Why wasn’t God here for her? Then it occurred to her that maybe God was there. She turned her head up, as if looking toward the sky, and she called out in her silent non-voice, “God, please come and help me. Take me away to Heaven.”
She knew the moment she said it that it would be so. She felt her body respond immediately. She felt peaceful and calm, and she knew she was on her way to Heaven. As she saw herself approaching the overpowering light, a thought occurred to her. It was almost comical, but she couldn’t help but mouth the words.... “Sometimes you just have to ask.”
6
Rabbi David Pearlstein was surprised. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t exactly sure how it should have been, but he knew this was wrong. He remembered his Torah studies, but he just couldn’t remember the details that the Scriptures had spelled out. No, what was really wrong was that he had formulated in his own mind exactly what death would be like, and this was not consistent with his formulation. He thought that his surviving family and friends would have to recite Kaddish, the mourners’ prayer, for a month after he died, or his soul wouldn’t even be eligible to enter Heaven. His soul must lie totally dormant for eleven months and a day. Then, and only then, would his soul be re-awakened in the Kingdom of God. But nowhere was it mentioned that he would have consciousness outside of Heaven. He thought he was either going to find himself in Heaven, or simply not exist.
He knew that it made no sense to dispute the facts. Things were what they were. But deep inside he wondered if he had spent his life as a false prophet. This was an overwhelmingly unpleasant thought to him. At least it should have overwhelmed him. It certainly would have while he was alive, but somehow it was just a disappointment to him now. He was so sure of himself in life. God had spoken to him, hadn’t He? In life, he taught everyone around him that life was a celebration of God. If he were wrong about death, could he have also been wrong about life? No, he was certain that God had spoken to him. This was all just too wrong.
He reflected on his religious beliefs. He certainly believed that God worked in unexplainable ways. God might have wanted the Scriptures to inaccurately describe death. But why? David thought about this for a moment. Then he decided that it was not his place to question or challenge God. But here he was in this.....this..... He realized that he hadn’t even taken the time to evaluate his surroundings. He was too caught up in his own confusion.
He began to look around. Sight seemed to be the only sense that was working. He couldn’t touch and feel, and he couldn’t hear anything, even when he tried to speak. His body was some sort of apparition, and there seemed to be only nothingness around him. He was floating or drifting. He felt a slight sense of motion, but he couldn’t find a fixed point anywhere to verify that he was moving. He turned his attention back to his death-body. What a strange apparition it was. It was its own source of light, like the hands of a watch when the lights go out. Why was there a body at all?
There had to be some purpose in all of this. Maybe he had wrongfully interpreted the Scriptures, but he knew in his heart that God was real. He just had to be real! The only alternative would have been that David had wasted his whole life misleading his flock. But that was simply not a viable alternative to him. So David had some decisions to make. Here he was, wherever here was, and he needed to figure out what he should do. But, maybe he shouldn’t do anything. “Stop this debating,” he silently reprimanded himself. He only knew what he knew. He decided to assume that his beliefs about death were perhaps just distorted. That was a better way for him to look at things. After all, his forefathers had argued over the meaning of the Scriptures almost since time began. Interpretation! Yes, it must only be a matter of interpretation.
He contemplated the bible stories he was so fond of telling. Now he thought back to the Hebrew words and their hidden meanings. Hebrew was filled with double meanings. And the Scriptures had been written and re-written; interpreted and re-interpreted. Who could know what the original intent was? He began to repeat to himself, in Hebrew, all of the biblical passages he could remember on the subject of death. The problem was that he didn’t think in Hebrew, but translated it into Yiddish instead. Yiddish was his native tongue.
Although he had studied Hebrew for so many years, he was all too aware that he really wasn’t an expert. He began to doubt himself. Had he never really understood the word of God? But, he continued his efforts to remember the Hebrew words of the Scriptures. He knew so much of it from rote. He had spoken the words so many times throughout his life. But now he was being much more literal in the translation of each line. He probably knew half of the Old Testament by heart. He worked his way through the entire Bible, translating as he went. When he was finished, he was suddenly overpowered by what had transpired. He wondered how long it must have taken him to do all that. In his mortal time frame, he estimated that it would have taken weeks to go through it all. Then he realized that time no longer seemed to have meaning. And he suddenly wondered why he felt no hunger or thirst. But, of course, he quickly realized that he knew the explanation for that.
He directed his attention back to the immediate problem at hand. What should he do? Then a thought occurred to him out of the blue. Maybe his soul had been dormant for eleven months and a day. Maybe it was just now re-awakened. That must be it! He felt a sudden joy in the knowledge he had just gained. And he knew exactly what to do. Without a moment’s hesitation he began to pray.
As he prayed, he felt the sudden force of God embracing his soul. He was certain he would soon be with his mother and father and brothers. He prayed in Hebrew and the words no longer needed translation. He saw the bright portal of Heaven open up to him before his very eyes. And, with a spectacular flash of blinding light, he knew he was entering the Kingdom of God.
