Ahem
I died on a Tuesday at about 6:15 in the morning. I had just taken my shower and was starting to shave when it happened. It was an aneurysm- quite unexpected and the autopsy had shown that I was in perfect health. These things happen.
That’s life, as they say. Life, death, it’s all apart of the same process.
My room mate found me face down in the bathroom sink, covered in shaving foam. My eyes were wide open and he thought I was joking with him.
I wasn’t there anymore, though. But someone was playing a joke on the both of us.
I had heard about heaven quite a bit while growing up. I was raised Lutheran, though I’d left that school of thinking behind a long time ago. The sentiments were nice but I was never able to surrender myself over to the idea of a higher power. The supernatural just seemed too unbelievable to me. There were just too many religions in the world and all of them sounded crazy.
They’d always tell us that heaven was this kingdom in the clouds. It was supposed to be an amazing city with pearly gates and angels blowing trumpets and God sitting on a golden throne with a long white beard down to his knees and his son at his right hand. Heaven- Shangri-La- Shaoul- Asgard- Jahat- it’s all the same crazy story with a benevolent tyrant-king deity who loves us as much as he hates us.
It’s fair to say that I was an atheist in life. Or at least agnostic. This was a very comfortable thing for me. I didn’t wrestle with Catholic guilt. I didn’t have to tithe. I didn’t have to pray in the direction of Mecca. I didn’t have to have children circumcised to appease an angry (but loving) God. Sunday was just another day. I could eat beef. There were no vision quests. There was no prayer. I can’t say that I regret any of it.
I was very surprised, though, when I woke up at a bar and a big man in a flannel shirt hoisted a pint of beer over the counter top for me. He had a thick gray beard, was toking on a corn cob pipe, and looked exactly like the sort of people you only see in Norman Rockwell paintings. He looked like a sort of off-season Santa Claus. Or a lumberjack. Or both.
The bar had wooden walls and looked a lot like a log cabin, only it was very large and I couldn’t tell how far it went in any direction. It was gigantic. Very rustic looking, but very pretty in a very un-fancy way. There were framed pictures of baseball players on the walls and many, many crowded tables and booths. A lot of the people at the tables looked familiar. There was guy who looked like Truman Capote, a woman who looked just like Lucille Ball and I thought that I saw Teddy Roosevelt with his arms around Walt Whitman and Zelda Fitzgerald, but that wasn’t possible. Was it?
Needless to say, I was very confused.
“Where the hell am I?� I asked.
The man in the flannel shirt chuckled and shook his head. He took a long drag from his corn cob pipe and smiled.
“Son,� he said. “The hell, this ain’t. Though I suppose you could call it heaven if you wanted to. Or Jahat if you were so inclined. Paradise. Hades. Nirvana. Whatever. The after life works well too.�
I blinked.
“Drink up. The tap won’t run dry and you’ll never be hung over.�
“Am I dead?�
“Oh, most certainly. You had an aneurysm and keeled right over. Dead as a door nail, or at least a door. The scorers gave you a 9.7. It would have been a 10.0, but the Russian judge always gives Yanks a 7.0 just because.�
I took a big drink of the pint of beer. It was ice cold and bohemian styled. It was very good.
“Are you God?�
The man in the flannel shirt laughed at me again and shook his head.
“People are always trying to call me that. But you can call me Hank.�
“Hank?�
“That’s the name. It’s always fit me pretty well.�
“I’ll be damned…â€?
“Not at all, son. There were never any rules to break. Except the golden rule, of course. Do unto others, ETC.�
I didn’t know what to think or even what to say. I pinched my arm to see if I was dreaming. I could feel my finger tips clasping skin
but it didn’t hurt.
“There’s no pain here, kid. You’re just going to have to believe me.�
I drank the beer quickly. It was cold and refreshing and possibly the best beer I had ever drank. Hank smiled and set another one down on the counter top and we repeated this ritual for three or four more.
He was a friendly looking man. He had big blue eyes and a very grandfatherly way about him. The beer settled in and I was beginning to accept the idea that God, well not God, Hank said he wasn’t God, looked like a lumberjack and was named Hank.
“Hank- all those religions that were back in life- none of them ever got it right?�
Hank shook his head at me again. He must’ve had this conversation dozens of times a day.
“Son, they all meant well. But, like I said, the only rule in life was the golden rule- treat others the way you would want to be treated. It’s a very, very simple rule. All those other rules you heard about were made up by people. They meant well, but any time you make the rules too hard to understand, too ornate, or dress them up with boring rituals, you’re bound to have crusades, holocausts, inquisitions, jihads, civil wars, and general, boring, every day conflicts.�
“Hank, I already believed that and I still didn’t believe in you until you set a beer down in front of me and told me that I was dead.�
“I don’t always believe in myself either,� he said and laughed. “It’s my inferiority complex.�
“God has an inferiority complex?�
“No, son- Hank does. There is no one named ‘God’ nor has there ever been. There is no Allah. There is no Shiva. There is no Great Spirit. God is just an idea. It’s an idea that has been given a lot of different names and a lot of different roles. It’s been given a lot of different definitions. Here are the things that are definite and true: You had parents. They reproduced. You were born. You died. Now you’re here and I’m your bartender. That’s it. No pearly gates. No city in the clouds. No 70 virgins. No hall of gods. No right hand man. No choir of angels- though we do have a jukebox. And last and not least- no writhing in agony in a pit of despair.�
“But, Hank, did you make the world and everything in it?�
“Certainly not. I just stumbled across this place while everything was, you know, happening. I can’t explain why I am here anymore than you can- save for the fact that I have a job to do and it gives me a lot of pleasure. I’m proud of my work.�
“Was there a meaning to life?�
“Certainly. It was living. It doesn‘t get much simpler than that. All those people who try and tell you that you have to work hard and be rewarded later on are crazy. People lived for thousands of years without acquiring loads of things and without money existing and without credit and television shopping and all of that awful mess that somehow ended up becoming what people use to mark their success with. The only purpose to life is living. And the only purpose in death is the end of living. And now you’re here.�
That hit me hard. There were a lot of things I’d never done that I had wanted to do. I’d never expected to end up being a slave for a wage. I didn’t necessarily want to change my world, but I did want to experience it. Instead I punched more clocks than I could think about, lived between more paychecks than I could add up in my head, and made a lot of excuses about how “that was the way things just were�. Hank was right about the simplicity of things. If the only purpose in life is living and the only rule to life is treat other people well- how did anyone in the world that I had lived in justify it’s existence. There were always wars. There were always harsh exchanges between people. All of us had someone we just couldn’t stand or bring ourselves to be nice too.
“You don’t give second chances, do you Hank?� I asked, hopefully.
“Sorry son, there are no second chances. Your clock was punched. You got an aneurysm and that’s it. Look on the bright side, at least it was quick.�
I wanted to be disappointed and I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be sent back so I could try again, but there was a new feeling now and I was very at ease in the realization that nothing actually mattered anymore and I was free.
“Have another one, kid,� Hank said sliding a beer across the counter top. “They’re all on the house.�
In Hank’s house there are many stools.
