heaven

It seems like every man’s always been looking for heaven.
Like a kid playing hide-and-seek with someone they’ve never seen.
From Zoroaster to Nostradamus to Hinde… And I’m sitting here, it’s two o’ clock AM and I’m sitting here, watching this evangelical show on television.

I have a secret.

Delilah said she wanted at least a day with me. That my being gone at the hospital every day was leaving her lonely- and that she’d die of loneliness.
She swore it as she tugged on my sleeve the morning before, grinning and stepping back.
She says she just happened to realize that it was a rather sunny summer, and that the country side surrounding our home was simply marvelous.
Happened to realize. It’s funny how she happens to do these things. But I realize I’m sick of the smell of sterile sorrow festering in my nose and in my mind, and that a day away from the hospital would be great.

I got a day off, it wasn’t a big deal.

What really gets me is how these televised preachers always talk about Heaven like they know exactly what it’s like. And then they say God’s grace is beyond our human comprehension.
Your donations can earn you your place.
What really gets me is that the suit and tie and microphone and fancy lighting system seem to be the opposite of frantic wondering wishing and trying.
What really gets me is that I’m the human monster in these men’s words, but I’m not seeing anything that’s much better.

We had driven for about an hour; with a new CD she had just bought in the car’s player, not so loud that we couldn’t talk over it. I suppose there was a mutual worry between us. A pretty silly one that neither of us voiced, but when you hardly ever see the one you love you can’t help but question their fidelity. It didn’t come up in our conversation- it was easy telling her about work now. I wish there was more I could’ve told her. She seemed to find it easy to go on about her life. She loved working at the museum, and the other day she went shopping and bought the bright yellow sundress she was wearing today.
She tells me it was the bargain of the century. She could die happy knowing she bought such a cute sundress for so cheap.

Almost every day that week the phone rang. Some reporter for some big news station trying their hardest to get an interview. After the first week I gave up on trying to politely decline. After the second week I finally just pulled the cords out. After the third week they knocked on my doors. After the month I finally gave in.

She had made egg-salad sandwiches, packed some chips, celery, and dip. Two cokes and a bag of Famous Amos cookies. We threw a blanket down on the pine-needles and dirt and bugs that composed the mountain’s floor, and let the dog run where he pleased.
His name was Jack. He was kind of like a kid, since we didn’t have the time to raise one. An adopted mongrel with a history of abuse, Delilah made it her project to make him feel loved.
She could make anyone feel loved.
We sat there on that blanket after having hiked around for quite some time. She ate her egg salad and her gaze carefully scrutinized it like she expected it to reveal some secret. She always did that. Take a bite, glance at her food, eat some more, and continue to stare at her food. Turning it this way, and then that.
Her attention shifted from a barbeque chip to me, and she grins.
“Mom used to say I should marry someone rich, that way I could live it up. But if I could do this with you, even if you didn’t have your job, I think I’d still be living it up.”
I tell her, that’s the kindest thing anyone’s said to me.
She grinned and sent her chip to its doom, before replying.
“If you’d be nicer, you’d hear a lot more from people.”
What- like karma? I say.
She just says it’s the Golden Rule.

Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.

Her eyes float back down to the egg salad sandwich, and a crimson stream suddenly starts to float down from her nose. She doesn’t even notice until it reaches her lips.

Her sobs and breaths are frantic now, and she weakly says, “Honey- what’s happening to me? Honey- what’s wrong with me?”


We’re sitting in the hospital room, the intern is holding the video camera and she looks at me, waiting. I tell her to give us a moment, and she exits the room.
Her skeletal hands look surreal in mine. She’s not a shadow of her former self; she’s just this hideous monster of a body that her consciousness is trapped within. It hurts to even look at her, she’s so grotesque.
I kiss her knuckles. They’re mountains now.

The anchor woman across from me asks me questions like I’m some horrible being that will come to realize what I am as long as I’m forced to consider these questions. She looks like she’s been on the beaches of Venice for weeks on television but this close you can see that it’s all fake. I tell her not to get excited. I tell her --- I’m not Jack Kevorkian, though my dog’s named after him.




I say, “No. . . There’s nothing wrong with you.
There never was.
You’re perfect in every way and I love you.
There’s something wrong with medicine. The environment. The world. Our cells.
But nothing will ever, ever be wrong with you.”

She smiles warmly from the cold grasp of death, and the intern returns. I tell her to turn the camera on and Delilah starts her soliloquy. I’ve never heard her say anything more truely before- she goes on. These are her last words. Her legacy. She says that she has consented to this.
Then I inject the nesdonal, and her eyes flicker and she drifts off into unconsciousness.
I’m forced to tell the camera everything I’m doing in a calm demeanor; I can’t read labels through tears. My voice is hoarse but I apathetically inform the camera about the physiological changes of my patient. Her tiny chest is still trying to heave up and down.
And then I deliver the triple dosage of Pavulon, and her tiny chest comes to a stand-still.

I groan for the camera to be shut off. And then I cry. I pull her up in my arms and I cry. My best friend, my true love, and now she’s gone. No more picnics. No more sundresses. No more mock-romantic outings in the kitchen. No more arguments and no more misplaced suspicion, she’s just gone.

The tears sting eyes that seem like they’ve been dry forever.

I’ll tell you what heaven is, miss.


Heaven is killing someone you love and feeling no guilt.