“It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.”
- Huston Smith
Sunday
Pray no more for utter oneness with God;
Where is the beauty if jewel and setting were one?
The heat and the shade are two,
If not, where is the comfort of shade?
Mother and child are two,
If not, where is the love?
When after being sundered, they meet,
What joy do they feel, the mother and child!
Where is joy, if the two were one?
Pray, then, no more for utter oneness with God.
- Hindu Devotional Classic
I’m surprised to find the path leading to my highly anticipated afterlife covered in dust. According to all the well-meaning folks back in Texas, it should be a bright tunnel pulling me along with some kind of sappy warmth I missed in life. Instead it’s nothing special—perhaps like my life. The dust isn’t shimmery or luminous. It flutters around my bare feet as I inch forward wondering if I’m being sent to hell. I consider all the times my hippy-turned-fundamentalist-wife tried to shove her religious beliefs down my throat and question whether I should have listened. But rather than the bright, glowing place Jane described in excruciating detail, the path is dusky, dull and ordinary. Considering all the hype, it’s disappointing.
I wasn’t such a bad guy. My goal was to shoot straight and live an uncomplicated life. Perhaps I was a bit subdued at certain junctures, but at least I wasn’t a drama queen; that was Jane’s role. I may have been a southern, white guy but I had the kind of balls you find in the Philly hood. They were there when I needed them, tucked inside my Wranglers and all the other crap I chose to hide behind.
Despite my confidence to self-identify as brave, tough, or sure, I wonder if I should bolt. Then I realize there’s only one direction; that running won’t make a hill of beans difference. Besides, I’m off-kilter. My body hangs light and empty around me as if the only solid piece left is that deep kernel I’ve always avoided. I can’t remember how old I am. Although I continue to grapple with it, the concept of age eventually evaporates into the dismal space I lumber through. As I move forward, the issues of body and age leave the mind I no longer have.
People often joke about death, saying, “Go to the light,” yet there’s no such beacon after all. There’s only my ability to see the vague path ahead. It’s confusing and I ache for that brand of peace that passes all understanding? Why am I here without it? Did it pass me over? I can’t recall what happened or how I got here. The darkness isn’t frightening but it’s lonely. I hope for light that offers more than simple illumination.
To quote my favorite writer, Charles Dickens, I’m “dead as a doornail,” spinning in a storm of peace. Truth be told, I haven’t thought of Dickens in awhile but he was my favorite back when I was young and filled with wild, romantic dreams of making the world a better place, sleeping with as many women as I could (I loved every one I met), and maybe someday becoming a real man with a real life. I studied literature and couldn’t wait to be an educator. Determined to mold young hearts, I imagined I’d become the leader I lost when my father was killed.
Some would have described me as a perfect specimen (at least on the outside)—handsome, tall and bright with thick, wavy hair and robust, strong arms to wrap around one lucky girl waiting for someone to whisk her off into the post-war dream of life we all envisioned with JFK at the helm. Even after his death, I saw him at the lead, bizarrely merged with my father. I felt him pulling me along through needless war (which I missed due to my kidney issues), cultural rebellion, and then some semblance of peace. I was determined to change the world, but instead I got a job and had a kid.
I’d almost forgotten all the outward promise that masked my internal imperfections so well. I wonder if death makes you forget or helps you remember.
Through all this wondering, I continue moving forward, feeling slightly tugged, like a puppy on a chain—free to roam within limits. Allowed to explore but only on the path chosen by the giant guy yanking the chain.
As I reach the end of my confusing, dusty path, I hear a voice. It says, “There you are, Jim Howard.” It startles me yet it’s familiar. It makes that gnawing kernel at my core realize I died with smaller balls than I was born with. Now I’m the pup who has stepped into the path of a huge dog. I’m not sure what to do, where to go, which way to turn. Frozen, I gape at the nondescript face staring at me, wondering where my balls—and all that promise—went and when I lost them.
“Sit,” the voice says, “for I am God.”
Then I finally see light. As it splashes through the space around me, I draw in a breath—expecting transformation. Surely this is the moment I turn into an angel, or suddenly understand life and death and everything in between. Music will ring out at any moment; the big brass band is on its way! I will be magically renewed to my original splendor and the celebration will begin.
I wait but nothing happens.
God just stares at me.
So I sit as if frozen in the expanding abyss cracking open around me.
Other than that, the end of the path turns out to be surprisingly simple: God and me sitting together in a wide open space that seems to house nothing and everything. It all rolls together in a way I could never have imagined. I reel over the fact that I’m in the presence of God. I wait for Him to speak again. Being dead doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to, yet it feels right. It’s all a bit shocking yet comforting. I’m not sure if there is a word to describe it other than weird. I look around but find nothing to look at. Yet the nothing I see fascinates me like the surreal drug-induced peace I experienced in the 70’s. I wish I’d known Jane then, when she was full of free love, pot, and possibilities.
I miss my wife—no matter how hell-bent she was on converting us all.
Finally His body, which was breathtakingly still while His face oscillated and morphed, seems to crack loose. He walks around like a normal guy but His legs slice the nothingness with finality and purpose I’ve not seen in all my years of watching men, trying to remember my father’s stride. I never told anyone about watching men like that; I knew it was odd but I couldn’t stop. Unlike my father, as God moves, the void reconnects behind Him with a bit of a cool shimmer. Jane said that in heaven all gaps are filled. She also said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” But I’m still left with the aching hole my father gave me. I know because it’s a big part of that kernel I keep trying to ignore.
In addition to the man-watching secret, I kept most of my drug-day stories to myself. Once upon a time, I believed dope took me straight to heaven. It pried open my mind and set me free. I wonder now how I got so cooped up again. It probably happened at the same time and place I lost my balls. But I know now that they collapsed gradually, so slow that the dull associated pain was easier to take. I must have been in that nerve losing, soul squelching place for much too long. I look at God and wonder how I failed.
He sits like a statue, as if listening to my thoughts. Jane always said, “God’s listening and waiting for you, Jim.” That drove me nuts, but now I wonder how long He’s been here waiting for me to complete my prolonged, painful thought process, to figure life out, and stop being a pussy. He finally smiles and says, “I’ve looked like Clooney a lot lately. George has a face filled with emotions every man craves, whether he realizes it or not.”
I shake my head in agreement, thinking it’s due to Clooney’s keen ability to look at once fatherly, boyish, and viral. I get it.
God shifts in his invisible seat.
His graceful movements remind me of the Dallas Metropolitan Ballet. I wonder why He would ever need to change in any way. If He’s perfect, why would He need to adjust? Gazing into His luminous face, I realize my heart isn’t racing the way it normally would in such situations. (Not that I’ve ever been in such a strange predicament, of course.) “Why am I here?” I ask, wondering if it’s a stupid question. I scratch my leg, not because it itches but because I need to touch something solid. I long for the colors of my life.
Suddenly I see them, flitting above me, fighting to emerge into the curious atmosphere that presses and lifts me all at once. Numerous cosmic contradictions, so many forces, backward and forward, over and under, play around me: light and dark, movement and stillness, meaning and emptiness. Yet I’m steady. I’m going nowhere yet I’m everywhere.
“Your life came to an end,” God says, his demeanor and voice adjusting to that of a typical Clooney character. I assume that’s what all the shifting was about. I’m star struck until I remind myself that seeing God is a much bigger deal than seeing George Clooney. “You think it sucks now but it’s not so bad,” He says. “You’ll see.”
His message doesn’t seem to sink in the way it should. Although everything I see and feel is beautiful beyond expression, hearing these words disturb me; I don’t want to be dead. I’m reminded of times in life when I’ve been utterly confused yet it’s not confusing. I’m aching with peace.
He says, “It happens to everyone sooner or later.”
I stand and pace, looking into the dichotomous movement and stillness surrounding me, searching for someone else: my dead relatives, my ancestors, my first wife (the one my mother and the ghost of JFK wanted me to marry). I notice that the atmosphere doesn’t splinter open for me. Instead it moves aside like fog cutting around a car on a long, lonely road. I feel something like blood pressure rising as I recall such a drive and Phil Collins’ eerie voice singing, “I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord. I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life,” yet there is no blood to rise. I wonder what fills me now. I can’t recall that long ago drive, the details. Why was I there and who was with me? Where were we headed? My memories are jumbled into a disturbing, swirling ball that was my life. I desperately need a frame of reference to pull them back into myself (whatever that is now) and sort them out again.
“Where is everyone?” I ask. “If I’m dead, isn’t this when I’m supposed to be reunited with my loved ones?”
God looks sad, and I think maybe Jane was right about how we continually break his heart. “Jane isn’t always right, and yes, we do listen to Collins here,” He says. “Now sit.” It’s a request rather than a command, delivered with arms extended in a welcoming gesture.
So I sit again, wondering what I’m sitting on. I look down and around but don’t see anything beneath me. I only feel. The space around me swirls yet nothing moves. I feel it all happening. I am both numb and exhilarated. I’m being told that I’m dead, festering in a deep grave beneath the tears of my family yet I’m in a fantastical place beyond their imagination.
Well, perhaps Jane could imagine it. She’s spent the majority her life visualizing her special place in heaven. Yet she’s got elements, major pieces, all wrong; I see that already. Over the years, she became so entrenched in her beliefs that I often wondered where she had gone. I wonder where she is now and what she’s doing. Many of the ideas and concepts she built her adult life around (and so artfully spliced into her personality), crash over me, falling at my feet like dust. Something inside me breaks for her; my heart is gone but it seems to be replaced by something just as full and heavy. I wish I could warn her.
“Everybody wonders what actually happens when the final curtain falls,” God says. “I know that Jane has. I know you have as well. I know what you were thinking at noon on February 6, 1956, and at midnight on July 6, 1986.”
“So you know everything. I get that. But what happens now? How did I die? Why can’t I remember?” I wrap my arms around myself. I’m not cold but I shiver as if I’m becoming part of the bizarre rippling mesh around me. I ache to hold myself together, to hang onto Jim Howard a little longer.
“Do you remember your life?” As these words emerge from God’s Clooney face, images of my life appear. They surround us like the movie about China I saw last year at Epcot. God somehow downloaded that intense ball of missing memories and is replaying it across the horizon. As if submerged in water, my head jerks gracefully from side to side following the mesh-supported images that slowly feed my memory back.
I stand and turn in slow circles taking in the whole of my life. It’s at once painful and beautiful. I want to cry but tears don’t come. I feel myself breaking down but don’t know if it’s emotional or physical. I wonder if the physical still exists. I touch my face and feel the wrinkles I picked up in life. I realize they’re fading. I should be happy, but instead I sense that I’m losing something important. I wish they’d stay, at least for awhile.
“I need to leave you here for a bit,” God says. “I’ll be back.” As He disappears, I realize I’m also seeing what’s happening now.
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