I was laying in the operating room and suddenly I saw myself floating above my own body. It was a very spiritual experience. As I looked down at myself on the steel operating table, I felt a deep sense of betrayal. I thought: "Why didn't anyone ever tell me I looked so fat?" As I continued to drift up to the hot lights above the table, the last words I heard were the nurse asking "resuscitate?" and the surgeon responding "HMO. You want to do Thai for lunch?"
Before the anesthesiologist suggested Korean food, I was aware of a bright yellow light at the end of a tunnel. It was just like the bug light on my porch and I felt as if I was seeing it through the cardboard of an empty toilet-tissue roll. Only the bug light was getting brighter and brighter -- like it had 75, 100 and 150 watt settings, which our porch one did not -- so I knew it must be something else. Suddenly, the light became a brilliant gold. It turned out to be Jesus' hair, which was made of curled sheets of gold leaf fibrillating in a light, perfect breeze.
They'd given me morphine and it took a while for my eyes to adjust before I realized what I was looking at. My Savior's hair was catching the sunlight, as if by design. His skin was the color of coconut meat and His eyes looked like perfect sapphires that sparkled with a mix of joy and mischief.
At first, I didn't recognize Jesus. This was hardly my fault, although He seemed to suggest otherwise. After all, He was wearing a Kelly-green sports coat, a yellow knit shirt and just the most beautiful ascot I've ever seen. It was navy-blue silk and had eagles holding American flags in their claws all along the periphery. I was surprised that He was not wearing a flowing robe like I have always seen Him in before.
But I guess anyone would get tired of the same old thing after a couple of thousand mornings before a bathroom mirror. Anyway, He explained that in Heaven, since folk can float beneath you, you need to think about modesty. I guess He had learned the hard way.
I looked around. There were posters everywhere of cute little kitties saying sweet things.
One had written across the top: "This is the first day of the rest of your afterlife." It was then that I realized I had made it to Heaven. So Mrs. Bowers had been wrong. The first thing I wanted to do was see my dear, wonderful mother, who had died while I was still just an unsaved fetus. I wanted to thank her for giving up her life to protect something more important than her. I know it was a little selfish, but I'd always been grateful that her church's "pro-life" sentiments were exhaustive enough to only refer to my life
I said, "Lord, I would love to see my selfless mother."
Jesus chuckled and responded with a voice as smooth as ultra suede. "Come this way, my child." (I was a little disappointed by the "my child" thing. There is something disconcerting about a god who speaks in clichés.) He pushed a button and a big Zenith TV came up. It looked like something from the 1960's. To be honest, I would have expected something nicer. Certainly not something with a country-oak cabinet. Of course, I didn't say this to Jesus.
But then, embarrassed, I was suddenly aware that He probably knew I was making fun of His TV in my mind, so I looked away for a moment to compose a completely benign expression.
When I looked back, I could see a woman appear on the screen. She was fading in and out like Auntie Em on the Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball -- only this woman was in color and had taken time to style her hair. In fact, the transmission quality was not as good as I would have expected (Jesus was using rabbit ears) and it took me a while to realize what I was seeing.
As Jesus adjusted the horizontal hold, giving the cabinet a swift kick with what looked like a small lightning bolt, I could hear the woman on TV say, "Help me, Anne!" That sort of struck me as odd. I mean, here I was standing next to Jesus, and she was picking me to be the one to help. That seemed like sort of a stupid call to me.
Just when I was thinking something not really flattering about the way this woman seemed so needy, I realized that she looked similar to a lady in pictures I had grown up looking at. You'd think I would have recognized her right away as my mother, but I guess I hadn't paid as much attention to those old photographs as I thought I had. Besides, my father was a pretty inept photographer. When I realized whom I was staring at I was blown away. I mean, I was looking into the face of the woman who had give me my genes. I began to cry. She really had not aged well
With increasing alarm, I noted that she was screaming while demons were breaking her fingers off one by one. Each time a bone cracked it made the sound of a pop-top on soda can being snapped open -- only without any exhaling of fizz. A pack of bug-eyed demons were swarming around Mom. They weren't really red, like I would have expected. More burnt-orange, but that may have just been Jesus' cheap television. They were licking their lips with forked, serpent tongues and were busily gnawing away at Mother's left leg. Well, maybe the right one, too, but that was off-screen, so I can't really hazard a guess. The way those demons' tiny little teeth were slamming into her flesh reminded me of rows of old electric typewriter keys pelting corporate memos in a movies I had seen with Doris Day and Tony Randall on AMC. I was horrified, but could not turn away from the scene of the busy demons. They seemed so efficient. I didn't know this before, but demons eat like the Chinese -- they never look up until they are done.
While I watched, Jesus pointed his beautiful, long fingers at the TV screen. He wears rings with semiprecious stones on all of His fingers. That struck me as unnecessarily flashy, since I wouldn't think you really need to draw attention to yourself when you are God. With a wave of Jesus' hand, Mother's broken fingers were miraculously healed back over, snapping up in unison as if she were a marionette. It made me think of that song "The Lonely Goat Herd" from the Sound of Music. I've always liked that song.
Before I could thank Jesus for fixing Mother's fingers, the demons began snapping them off again. Mother kept yelling, "Please Anne! Please Jesus! Help me!" I looked a Jesus, wondering what He would do, but He was fiddling with the handkerchief in His pocket. It sort of matched His ascot; at least I think He probably thought it did. As soon as Mother's last digit was snapped, Jesus waved His hand again without even looking at the screen. Mother's fingers snapped back to attention -- only to be broken again.
Clearly, Mother had done something to annoy Jesus.
I was about to call out to Jesus to spare my Mother (although I was a little curious to see how many times He was going to do this heal-break cycle) when I realized that this might be a test. You see, I wasn't sure if I was actually in Heaven or being processed with my destination as of yet undetermined. I had to think fast. I knew Mother must have been sent to Hell for a really good reason. I later found that she had cursed God when she bent a nail back while trying to clean under our toaster oven. Daddy had fortunately throw out that appliance before I was old enough to clean. There but for a burned out element.
I was becoming increasingly concerned about the sins of the mother being visited on the daughter. Furthermore, it's not as if I really even knew her, so I certainly didn't want to give Jesus the impression that I missed her that much. So I looked Mother in the eye and said, "Mother, it's Anne! Your Christian daughter you never met. You gave your life so that I might live." For some reason, my saying that seemed to rankle Jesus, but I certainly got my Mother's attention.
I then rebuked her.
Into my twentieth minute of extemporaneous invective, I noticed in my peripheral vision Jesus glance at his watch. I was really surprised that He had one. Anyway, I took this to be a sign that I should wrap it up sooner than I had originally planned. To be honest, His impatience rubbed me the wrong way since I was rebuking Mom all for His benefit in the first place. When I finally stopped, completely out of breath, Jesus turned the television off. Before the grainy image flickered to black, I did detect an expression of dismay register on Mother's too-thin lips. But, thinking back, that could have just been a look of excruciating pain.
While I was regretting the necessity of what had just occurred and admiring how surprisingly blue the Atlantic Ocean looked from up here, something bumped me on the shoulder. Not with just a light tap, but with the force of someone throwing a baseball a your back. Before I could even see what had hit me, I heard someone mutter, "Fuckin' bitch! Outta the way!" Someone else then shoved me on the shoulder as they passed. I heard them muttering the c-word. And I don't mean "Christian."
I know from flying United that you can't expect courtesy at high altitudes, but this was not the Heaven I had dreamed about.
"Ah, what just happened here?" I asked Jesus.
"You were in his way," Jesus responded flatly, waving at the angels who had winged me.
"Hello? What about 'excuse me'?" I asked, trying to reach the part of my shoulder blade that had been hit. I couldn't get that far down and Jesus didn't seem inclined to move. "I would even expect that back down on Earth. Well, except Paris."
"You're not on Earth."
"Well, frankly, I'm just surprised to hear that kind of language," I complained, feeling a little annoyed that my Personal Savior had not been chivalrous enough to come to my rescue. I mean, He just stood there and watched the whole thing and now didn't look the least inclined to wave his wand at my back.
"Look," said Jesus, "You're going to hear a lot worse if you stay up here. I've got to be honest. Well, obviously. Hell is hotter, but we have the more obnoxious people up here. Most of them have filthy mouths."
"But I thought you had to be good to get up here!"
"You worked for America's best Christian all those years and didn't even learn the rules? All you have to do is accept me as your personal savior. I mean, no exaggeration, we get murderers with mouths like sewers, but just before they died, they accepted me as their personal savior so we have to let them in. We don't want to, but those are the rules."
"But I though you had to also, like, love your neighbor or something."
"No. You weren't following. You don't have to love your neighbor. You don't even have to be nice to them. You only have to love me with all your heart. I guess you can tell who writes this stuff," Jesus said with a laugh. To be honest, I wasn't finding any of this very amusing as I had just overheard a pair of female angels who sounded like hookers. "You only have to treat your neighbor as you would treat yourself. See the difference? The Golden Rule can lead to wild results with the grossly dysfunctional. Frankly, we get a lot of masochists with Tourette's Syndrome."
"You know," I said, "Nothing personal, Savior, but I'm not sure if I even want to be here."
Before I could even tell Jesus that I had only made a hyperbolic observation to convey exasperation, He began flapping His arms and turned into a lovely white dove. He flew away before I'd had a chance to ask Him if Revelation had really been written by someone on mushrooms.
A diamond and ruby cab pulled up and the cabbie spoke perfect English. When he registered my surprise at this odd fact, he told me that Heaven had instituted an "English Only" rule forty years ago since all saved people speak English (how else could they read the Bible?). And folks who were home-schooled, who had a hard enough time with one language, resented people who also spoke French showing off with the menus at mealtimes. Before I even realized I was sitting in the cab, we were driving down a beautiful road. I was so pleased to note that at least this part of Heaven was just as I had always been told it would be! The streets were all paved with pure gold. As we merged from a 24-karat expressway ramp, the sun's rays began directly hitting the metallic street and the glare was so great we couldn't see anything ahead of us. I reflected with some consternation upon the fact that good intentions would have actually been easier to drive on. I felt a thud and the cab driver screamed.
The next thing I knew, we had driven off the solid gold road and were free falling, spiraling down through the clouds. I saw hundreds of cheaply dressed families looking out of their mansions in the sky as we passed. Some pretended not to notice -- I guess to avoid having to wave back. The cab began spinning so fast that the centrifugal force shot my glasses up to the ceiling where they hovered for a moment before flying out of the sunroof. I was now almost blind. That really bothered me since I hadn't even met Go yet and had always wondered what He really looked like. We were turning so fast that things outside the cab were getting blurred -- like someone had turned a fire hose on the windshield. The last thing I could clearly make out was an illuminated Red Lobster sign.
That surprised me since God had banned shellfish in the Old Testament. "Do as I sayeth not as I doeth," I guess. There was a loud crash as we hit a passing 767, followed by a very unchristian word
The next thing I heard was the beeping drone of sonic pulses. They became quicker and quicker. It was as if I was eavesdropping on a Morse code transmission and a more skilled and emphatic operator was now tapping out the message. This time, there was no light at the end of a tunnel. Indeed, no light at all. Just total darkness. I was scared. I assumed that it had been me who had so inartfully screamed "Fuck!" as our heavenly car hit that Delta jet. I guess I was just trying to fit in in Heaven.
I must be now in Hell. This thought did not appeal to me, as Father had told me that Mother was one to hold grudge and our last and only encounter might not have been to her liking. Suddenly, a warm light filled my eyes. A light switch had just been flicked on. "Jesus?" I asked. Looking up, I realized I was lying on the operating table alone. Someone in a lab coat flinched when I turned to look at him. He said a word that made me think that he would eventually go to where I had just been.
