Memories

What’s the deal with Heaven?

by Mich

ELECTROMAGNETIC ENIGMA

One can assume that dead souls have no corporeal form. No body, no flesh and blood, no physical parts, no carnality. No carnal desires. No appetite, no interest in sex or alcohol or cocktail hour or any other pleasures.

Many imagine the dead to be spirits inhabiting a heavenly realm. To others, they are conjectured to be some sort of electrical energy, unknown phenomena of electromagnetic waves emitting signals or light or heat or something that is currently unimaginable.

That concept of heaven would be no fun at all. The living who expect to be reunited with their dead loved ones would be disillusioned and disappointed to find that their flesh and blood companions had been transmogrified into a metaphysical, intangible presence.

The Sunday School/Born Again Christian/Devout Catholic concept of dead human beings miraculously transformed into heavenly bodies in recognizable form, capable of being hugged and kissed and sharing lives again in a glorious eternity, is, on the face it, a tad crazy.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

But, harking back to the ever-so slightly less crazy concept of electromagnetic wave phantasmagoria, who wants to be reunited with a dead companion if the former flesh and blood loved one is a disembodied pulse or signal or sensation in a supernatural state of metaphysics?

One argument is that when you yourself are dead, you would also be a wave or a pulse, an indestructible atom, etcetera, and you and your companion would get along swimmingly, pulsing and waving throughout the cosmos for ever and ever.

Still, no fun. Certainly, one can confidently say it would be the end of conversation and camaraderie and cocktail hour as we know it.

In conclusion, if you want to be with the spirit of your loved one, then perhaps the best course of action is to not be dead, to stay alive and be at one with the memory of your lost soulmate — memory and spirit becoming one, a communion, a peace of mind amid grief.

That may be the best deal we’re going to get in this basic, godless, down and dirty life.

 

The Summer Wind and the Winter Wind

by Mich

One night in 1984 I showed up at a woman’s apartment in Miami with a bottle of tequila, a bottle of cointreau and a Frank Sinatra album.

She rolled a couple of joints while I mixed the booze in a pitcher and we sat on the bed smoking grass and drinking hardcore margaritas.

We ended up playing one of the Sinatra songs over and over. You tend to do that when you’re high.

Unlike the guy in the song, I didn’t lose her to the summer wind. We were together for thirty-four years, a turbulent marriage but a solid one. In †he end I lost her to the winter wind.

🎶 And now the days, those lonely days, go on and on…

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An Amendment to the Laws of Death

by Mich

Late-night cocktail

Ingredients: Mix 7 decades of advancing age with 3 decades of memories and 2 years of loss and bereavement, plus 1 hard dose of covid lockdown, and you have the ingredients of a bedtime cocktail.

For an energetic, gregarious guy who hurried hither and yon in a global society, this is one cocktail that’s hard to swallow.

But, as the cat jumps up on the bed to keep me company, swallow it I do. Unlike late-night cocktails of yore with my wife, who departed this Earth before me, one of these suckers is enough.

It’s too early to sleep and I can’t concentrate to read, so I think about the structure of my Amendment to the Laws of Death. I have only just begun, there is still much to be worked out and written.

Amendment to the Laws of Death

Article 1

Section 1: Death

In the union of husband and wife, the husband shall predecease the wife. Rationale: Women (assuming the wife is a woman) are better equipped emotionally to handle the death of a spouse than vice versa. Throughout history the law of averages in an analysis of obituaries has shown that wives, who for our purpose here shall be designated as women, outlive their husbands, who etc etc shall be men.  This law of averages shall be preferred and preserved.

Section 2: Afterlife

Oblivion shall hereby be abolished. Rationale: If Oblivion is abolished, over time it will cease to exist. But Something must fill the void since nothingness is an untenable concept.

What is that something? [Note: Work on this.]

The cat settles in on the foot of the bed for sleep. A sleepy look at me suggests I turn out the light. This I do. I can’t sleep but I have a lot to think about. Thirty years of memories.

People tell me to move on, to find a new companion and replace those memories with new ones. To which I say, Why the hell would I want to do that?

What is that something?

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