by Fred Prout
This is a “Think Piece”. Someone suggested that thinking was not a bad idea. I should try it. “ Try it, you’ll like it “. I did and I do.
The other day I was having coffee with my sweetheart. She had the music thingie playing Irish pub music. One of my favorites. Out of nowhere it brought me back to a time and place of intermittent joy surrounded by a whole bunch of pain. Almost fifty years ago.
I was living in Connecticut and my daughter was in Canada. I was fortunate that I was occasionally able to make the 531 mile trip to see her. Driving eight hours and fifteen minutes north, and, what seemed like an eternity, south. The wipers on my eyes working overtime.
Between the driving was a great visit. We tried to squeeze a whole lot of time into a very little space. I know you understand that time is not constant. Sometimes it flies by and sometimes it drags. Going north flying. Going south dragging. Really dragging.
One of the best things we did was get together with some of her friends and visit THE OLD SOD. An Irish pub. An occasional beer combined with enjoying the music and the company. A truly wonderful time. Fortunately I never questioned how my teenage daughter knew of such a place.
I was describing this to my sweetheart, and, the squirrel in my head got off his wheel and whispered in my ear. I had one of those moments when an idea tries to fly through your head and not get caught. Well, I caught it. I’m going to try to explain what that squirrel had to say. But, first some background.
It seems like ever since we, as a species , started thinking, we looked for things that would help or hurt us. Make the crops grow. Provide food and shelter. Keep the monsters at bay. We went from praying to trees and rocks to modern theology in a relatively short time. Part of that theology, for many of us, is the idea of reward and punishment. That got us to the concept of heaven and hell. Places.
But if not places, WHAT IF?
WHAT IF instead of a place it was something different. Maybe we earn points for how we live. Plus and minus. Since I hope for the best let’s just do the good choices. WHAT IF in my final seconds of this life the angels came and told me that I had earned a score just on the good side. Therefore, in my last second of life I could relive one day of my past. My mind would condense a twenty four hour period into that final second. The higher the score the better. The ones who got a bad score would not get a choice. The angels would choose.
My sweetheart and I talked about this. I said at the time that I would choose one of those days with my daughter. I have since spent many hours in thought about many of the other options I might have. In the seventy plus years of my life I have had some truly wonderful days. I have had many fantastic people wander through my life. For varying lengths of time. Many places and experiences to consider. I finally decided two things.
One: I wished that I had earned a higher score.Lived a better life. Maybe get to pick two days. Two: My original choice held. A day of happiness in the middle of days and weeks of emptiness was what I would take. How about you? Think about those wonderful days you could choose from. Don’t wait. Relive them now. Maybe pick up some extra points.
Fred
My original thought was an ‘evening of relief’……1963, a few months before my 21st birthday, (spent in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka). The day before, my travel buddy & I caught a train from Baghdad to Basra in Iraq.
Talking aboard, in a mish-mash of virtually unrelated words in a variety of pseudo languages, we conveyed that we intended to cross from Basra to Iran. One guy, small, who showed pics of himself lifting enormous weights, had a visa allowing him to go to Kuwait to work. He explained, through a number of translators, that the time the train arrived in Basra it’d be too late to cross, and suggested that the three of us share a cheap room overnight and he’d direct us on the ‘morrow.
Morning, we all proceeded to the local market where he loaded us in a cab with (what seemed like) thirteen hundred other people……when a Land Rover screeched up, submachine guns were pointed through the cab windows and we & he ended up at a police station where we sat until dark.
Finally an officer showed up, realized the ridiculousness of the whole scenario, and said we could leave………outside again, we signalled to the Iraqi that we should ‘rinse & repeat’……sheer terror in his eyes, he turned and ran off in the opposite direction.
With naive “What the…?” expressions on our faces we watched him disappear into the darkness……..wasn’t until eons later that I realized that he knew we could have all ‘disappeared’.
So that’s the story I thought of telling…….before I switched to this one: After my late wife passed and I began making contact with females again, (one at a time, not like some who apparently send out ‘mass feelers’); things seemed to be going well with each of them and then they disappeared.
Then…..DW showed up……the moment I saw her a voice said “This could work”…..except it wasn’t MY voice…..I swear it was my late wife’s (and I’m NOT a believer in such things)…….but 23 years later things continue to get better and better.
So…as the song says, “Goes to show you never can tell”.
Bottom line…if there IS an afterlife I fully expect to be greeted by my late wife with a “So, how’d it go?” smirk.
Thanks Fres … I’m thinking.