Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twin
Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don’t forget when you leave why you came.
Adlai Stevenson II
Joshua Raymond had beaten cancer twice, first on his skin and later his prostrate. His cousin Johnny had not been so lucky, he died at ten from leukemia, They had been close and he even went to Johnny funeral, he remembered sitting near the casket and just looking at his playmate. He looked so peaceful, and yet different, he could not say why, but he just looked different. He had seen him later in dreams, always saying he was okay, his mother had explained everything to him, but there was only so much a ten year old could understand. He thought of Johnny from time to time, especially when he had his cancer diagnoses. But he had overcome them and at eighty one was feeling well, except he could not sleep well at night, thus he took long afternoon naps. He would sit looking out a window at the streets below his apartment and think of things, like his old dogs and the old Siamese cat he use to have. He thought of his younger days and the so many that had now passed on. One New Year’s Day he been over at his son’s house and decided to take a nap before dinner. When the family sent his little grandchild out to wake him the young boy returned to the kitchen and said that grandpap would no wake up. Joshua Raymond now belonged to the ages.
Joshua had laid down and just as he fell asleep, he saw a young man standing over him, the guy said his name was Paul and he told Joshua to come with him. When Joshua got up he looked back as saw himself laying on the couch, looking much as Johnny did in the casket. He watched his grandson come out and try to wake him and heard the commotion and tears that followed. Paul told him all would be fine and led him out of the house to a grand limousine parked in front. Paul opened the door and Joshua got in, and they rode up a silver stairway into the clouds. Paul said he was taking him straight to the Great Hall and everything would be explained to him there.
They soon pulled in front a great gate, it looked like a silver gate encrusted with pearls, and a majestic looking woman motioned them in. Soon he saw the Great Hall, it looked like Hampton Court in England, which he had visited many years ago, or some other grand building of those times. He noticed two people, an older man and a young woman, sitting on a bench outside of the hall, they looked sorrowful and concerned. Then they pulled up to the grand doors. The doors were golden and a great relief of angles and trees and other fantastic creatures were engraved into them. Paul escorted them through the opening doors and there to greet him were family and friends that had all died before him. Johnny came running up and told him he had taken a long time to get here, Joshua just laughed at that. Johnny and Paul took him around the Great Hall, which seemed endless, to the grand libraries and lecture halls, then to the many stages and other places were those there gathered. Every book that had ever been written was in the libraries, in the lecture halls you could hear debates and lectures from all the great thinkers of all time. The greats of screen and stage all performed in the theaters along with all of the great singers and musicians. You could walk along and speak with Winston Churchill, Nelson Madelia, or Aristotle or even St. Paul. You could befriend Henry VIII or George Washington,, one could see and speak with the great people of history and those who lived their lives in the eternal land of obscurity. He saw people who he did not think would have made it here, but he was told Heaven was much bigger than anyone thought and Hell was much smaller.
After many reunions and seeking out some he had always wanted to talk to, his parents pulled him aside and told him they were taking him to the place he was to abide in, but he could return to the Hall anytime he pleased. They walked out of the Hall and along a path into the great forest that surrounded the place. Joshua noticed he did not get winded or tired and could walk at the pace he had when he was a young man. They talked about so much as they walked, about his childhood and all of the great and not so great times that had passed between them. They then walked up a small hill and there Joshua saw a place he had known and lived for many years, his grandfather’s house. The two story house with the giant covered porch in front loomed over the horizon, not in the old city he had visited as a child, but as his father said, the old pasture the old couple had grown up in the West Virginia. There on the porch , was the giant swing that he remembered and there sat grandad and grandma sitting the the old rockers that he remembered playing in as a child. But his grandparents, Alfred and Gertrude Raymond did not look like the old couple he had known, but like the old pictures they had of each other that sat upon the mantle of the giant fireplace in the living room. As they came near he heard his grandfather call out.
“Calvin, bring up Elenore and young Josh,” the old guy yelled, ” been awhile since you’all been around, come set a spell.”
“Be right there , dad, ” Alfred retuned, ” Josh just got here, and me and Elenore been visiting with Sue and Frank.”
Joshua rushed up the stairs and sat in the big swing as he parents took their seats on two of the various chairs that were around. His grandmother always kept a lot of chairs on the porch, so she did to have to turn anyone away. They sat and talked for what seemed like hours, about all kinds of things. Joshua just felt so happy, happier that he had ever felt. See he had been struggling with depression for many years, and hid it very well. many times he would be overcome with feelings of sadness, remorse, and regret, regret was the hardest to deal with, and he could function very well though all of those times. He had dealt with the black cloud of depression from the time he was twelve, when the nightmares and terrors of the the dream world began. He was the perfect example of the old saying, that the biggest lie in America was, “I’m fine.” (or good, no problem, doing OK) He had spent his life living as a functioning depressant, and did it very well. He never felt part of life, it was liking watching a long TV show that he was part of but not. At times he felt he was in the ocean, just few yards from the beach. Everyone was on the beach, but he could not reach them, as every time he tried the waves pulled him back. But that was not the worse time, the worse was when he felt he had entered a long, black canyon. It was a long dark road as the canyon had one thousand foot black granite walls and the path was only two or three yards wide. Sharpe rocks were all around and one could easily stumble, causing wounds that never really healed. You could not turn back, and it seemed to go on forever, into eternity. He would stumbled in that canyon sometimes for weeks, once it was close to three months. He could feel himself slipping into that dreaded path, but he could not avoid it, but that was inside him. Outside whether in the water or in the canyon, he functioned well in society, nobody ever knew his pain.
He actually liked being alone, he was not a people person. he had been married, his family manipulated him into a marriage with one woman they felt was good for him. They had a long marriage as he just never tried to end things, but many times wish he would, but it was loveless and after a while became sexless. They had two kids, who he loved dearly, but he came to find his wife annoying and basically tolerated her for years. About twenty years ago she was killed in an auto accident, she was playing a game on her phone while driving and got distracted by it and ran into a bridge abutment. He had seen her earlier, but she was with her friends and they said little, there was just nothing between them anymore. He had a few relationships with some women he knew in high school and one from college, but they were never serious as all of them saw no point in marriage anymore. The the women were now in Heaven and Joshua did meet them and spoke for a while, just reliving old times.
He spent a long time on the porch with his grandparents, just sitting and visiting. Paul returned and told him he was going to take him to his place in Heaven. They walked down the hill, but not back to the Great Hall, but into the forest that surround his grandparents house. His grandfather told him to come back and visit and Joshua said he would do just that. He walked with Paul for what seemed to be thirty or forty minutes unit the came to a clearing in the trees. There he saw something that took him back to his childhood days when he visited his aunt outside of Pittsburgh. There in the clearing was a small water fall, lapping over a small cave, only about a foot high, into a pond that just wandered back into the trees. There he saw an old tree, felled over, just like the one he use to sit on when he came to this place as a child, it even had the partial stump next to it. He sat down and put his back on the tree and remembered the hours he spent in that place as a child. They were some of the happiest times of his life, just sitting there alone in the forest, listening to the water fall and watching the days go by. Paul told him to look at the stump and think of a book, and Joshua did just that. Suddenly the book appeared, and when he picked it up, a notebook appeared next to it.
“Now open the book, and think of something you would want opt write down” Paul whispered.
Joshua did that, and whatever he thought appeared in the notebook, Paul continued, “If you want to read a book, or journal, or article, just think of it, it will appear on the stump, it can even give you computer stuff. Whenever you wish to write down or remember, just think of it and the notebook will record it. It has unlimited pages and will take you to any note you ever write, just by thinking of it.”
“So anything I wish to read, I just have to think of it and it will appear, and notes will as well?” Joshua asked in amazement and excitement.
Then the bushes rustled, and out popped his two old dogs and his old cat. The dogs, Calvin and Zion, were your typical mutts, but they were not the old sick ones he long ago had parted with, but they were young again, just as he was. His old Siamese cat, Brandy, walked up to his and stretched out on the tree just behind him, the dogs curled up around his feet. Paul left and Joshua picked up a book and began reading as the dogs would chase after leaves and curl up by his side. The cat would dash around a bit, and then just curled up on the tree. Paul explained he could stay here as long as he wanted, and could leave anytime to visit anywhere, and all would be here whenever he returned.
For a long while, he lost track of time, Joshua read his book and took notes. After finishing one book, he got another, a history of Anglo-Saxon England, which he read for a while then played with the dogs and the cat cat for a while. He was alone and loving it, soon he just laid back and watched the trees sway and the leaves swirl. He listened to waterfall bubble and swish down into the pond and laid there feeling more happy than he ever had been, this was Heaven to him. as he sat in the grass, he heard footsteps and voices coming towards him. He was not afraid, but curious, then two figures came into the clearing. There was two two men, one was a tall Native American the other a man who stood no higher that a person’s knee. The man introduced himself, he was Kanati, a Cherokee, he said he was their first chief and the small man was one of the Nunne’hi, small Native American spirits much like a fairy.
“So you have come to sit and live in this spot, I call it galosgv amoy, because of the little waterfall, you can call it what you wish,” Kanati said.
Joshua smiled and responded, “Don’t really got a name, maybe I could use yours, or what is your word for home?”
Kanati laughed , “Ownvsv, yes, that would be good for you.”
Joshua thought a minute then smiled, “Got an idea, just came to, I call it Pretannik Thwait, old Celt name, means homestead clearing, that works.”
Kanati agreed and Joshua made a sign with the name on it, and placed it on a tree, They spoke for a while, he told Joshua the tales of the Cherokee and how he hunted to forest when it was only Cherokee who lived in them. Or at least it seemed that way, he loved to walk in the forest for days, just him and his little spirit friend. He told how a group of white men came from the sea, in boats with dragon heads and many colored sails. How he marveled at their blond hair and blue eyes, they were warriors, but tired of war. They also loved to wander the forest too, and soon became part of the Cherokee nation, but that was after Kanati left for this land. Joshua had no idea how long he stayed but they talked and became friends. Soon Kanati said he was moving on, as he loved to just wander and walk in the woods. Joshua told him he was welcome back anytime, and Kankati said he would return. No time was set, it was a moot point, time was no longer a thing anyone even thought of in this place.
Later as he was sitting there another person came by, the old frontiersman and America’s first celebrity, Davy Crockett. Like Kanati, Crockett also loved to wander though the wood for long periods, just looking for what one could see. Joshua hailed to old woodsman and they sat around and just talked. Davy told all of his old tales, and spent a long time telling of his falling out with Andrew Jackson.
Davy looked off and began, “It all came down to the plantations and money being made from them. You know till old Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, the west, or at least what we called the west, was a place for small farmers ,and the land speculators that preyed on them. Not too many went into the deep South, it was too hot and the land was hard to farm. At first, old Oglethorpe in Georgia told them to keep the plantations out, but they did not listen, the plantation people, they was a real greedy bunch. forced out the little guys in Georgia. But after the cotton gin and the boom in cotton, they got like a train coming down the tracks. Cotton made them move into the deep South and keep moving west as the cotton was hard on the land. The plantations with their slaves forced the Indians out, and played hell with anyone who got in their way. I went to Texas hoping to find a spot where I could be alone, but ended up at the Alamo. Was a great fight though, old Santa Anna would been better off just surrounding us and going after Houston, but he was determined to wipe all of us out. Cost him the end.”
Joshua and Crocket relived many more tales and spoke long about how they loved being alone. Then like Kanati, Crockett left and went back to wandering, it just what he does. Said he would be back, sometime. Joshua spent his time in the clearing, or wandering the forest, with visits to his grandparents and the Great Hall, whenever he was moved to do such. He lost track of how many books he read, and loved to hear lectures and songs at the Great Hall. he met many other people from history, some famous, but most, like him had lived in the eternal community of obscurity. He heard Caruso and John Lennon sing, laughed at Jackie Gleason and George Carlin, and was enthralled by lectures by Albert Einstein and Thomas More. He even visited the two people he saw sitting on the bench outside of the Great Hall. He learned their names, Edward and Michelle Clark, they had been serial killers and had repented and were given the chance to come into the Great Hall. But they did not feel they should so they just sat outside and wondered why they had been forgiven. Joshua’s dad said it was because they could not believe that forgiveness was what power and glory was.
Joshua even visited the home of He Who Is in the great celestial palace on top of the great mountain overlooking all of Heaven, and was awestruck by the place. He saw George Washington sitting in the main throne room, given a place of honor because he had done what almost no human had, walked away from absolute power. He spoke with a very friendly old guy, who looked like an old medieval English king. They spoke for a long time, and Joshua asked which king he was.
“I am who I am,” was his reply.
Joshua expressed surprise and was going to say he did not look like God, but God said he had no form and looked like whatever one though he should. He met angles and went to Sorcerer’s City and marveled at the sights there. He visited the magic realms of both the witches and wizards and found the great River of Time. But mostly he just stayed in his clearing and read and played with the dogs and the cat. He was at home, and he loved his home, better than any one he had in life. Then one day he heard a familiar voice.
“Dad?” a young man queried.
Joshua looked up and straight into his son’s face. he exclaimed, “Daniel, how did you get here, I mean you were young.”
Daniel smiled and responded, “Well when you died I was, but I lived to be eighty nine.”
The two of them laughed, and hugged, and had a great reunion. Daniel took Joshua back to meet all the new people who had come to this place, so much time had passed. But time was a moot point. Here it had no meaning. It just passed, and n0obodyu cared or bothered to keep track of it.
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