DISCLAIMER: There are several accounts of afterlife experiences on the New York Times Best Seller list, including one by a three-year-old boy (with a little help from his dad). This is my account. Though tempted, I'm not writing for ready cash.
Just want to keep that IRS-tracking record, er, straight. Cross my heart. So said, I share . . .
It was, according to my cellphone, 12:02 a.m. Preoccupied with voice messages from a busy Sunday — including, by coincidence, earlier guilt-free attendance at church — I fall into an extra-large pothole for which tourist-traveled Michigan is noted and so favorably acclaimed nationally.
No sooner have I lost mortal consciousness when I see the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel." Intrigued, I move closer and closer, somewhat startled, pleasantly surprised, that the light is bright rainbow colored.
Not quite sure that I am, so to speak, "not in Kansas anymore," I cautiously look about, and while the afterlife streets here are not made of 14K gold, they're not unlike Dorothy's fabled MGM Yellow Brick Road.
Each brick carries a name and a date marked in cursive writing, "Came Out . . ." Some are centuries old, I'm sure.
Out of nowhere, ten thousand Off-Broadway voices begin to sing, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The familiar anthem is interrupted by my cellphone ringing. (I pray my phone's brilliant pixel capacity does justice to the zillion pictures I'm planning to take.)
"Hey, Big Guy, welcome home. Go to Seventh Heaven Condos, corner Oscar Wilde Boulevard and Alice B. Toklas Avenue. Ask for Bobby Short, concierge. Say Between The Lines sent you. Bobby will love that."
I type in GPS: Gay People's Spiritual directions, kick up my heels — suddenly realizing my size 13, EEE shoes are red — and start to float effortlessly above a crowd of well wishers below me waving banners.
"Get you, Mary!" "You look Heavenly!" "Don't look a day over 30-something!" "Hubba Hubba!"
My aerial acrobatics are elating, joyful, free-spirited. "Surely, I'm dreaming," I say to myself as I soar effortlessly. My flight of new-found fancy lands me abruptly, but ever so softly, in front of an imposing temple, Many Mansions One-On-One. Its sign reads, Silence Is Never Golden.
Parting Glances: My 10 Minutes In Heaven (Pt. 1)
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