Eternal Life and How to Enjoy It

Book Excerpt: CHAPTER ONE

A Boring No-Account Accountant

     I died in the early 1960s, during that breathing space between the Cuban missile crisis and the Kennedy assassination, those halcyon days of our commonwealth whose charm and promise have come to be commemorated, even by the cynical, as Camelot.
     Indignant and dismayed by my wife?s defection into the arms of my oldest rival, I did the previously unthinkable: called in sick to work and jumped into the car for an unscheduled weekend touring Pennsylvania.
     A boring, no-account accountant she called me, and by God she was right, but I wasn?t about to admit it then. It took about two years (Earth time) in Heaven to face the embarrassing truth.
     Lovely September weather, and in that most appealing of northeastern states, I took the roads as they came, using whim of the moment as my map. Second day out, with the evening just stretching its intentions, I slammed head-on into a Ford of partying teenagers.

First Brush with Flight

     Seconds probably passed, but all I knew was that I was suddenly hovering above, amazed and unbelieving, watching three of them crawl from the wreckage. Broken little children, forever bruised. The sight, so full of anguish and pain, pushed me to tears, something completely out of character for old Henry.
     ?It?s about time,? said a voice from my left.
     I twisted to see a quite ordinary middle-aged man in golfing attire. He seemed bemused.
     ?I thought you were never going to cry, Mr. Cool-as-a-cucumber.?
I felt mocked, yet I wasn?t entirely sure. And I still hadn?t a clue why I was hovering above the car. But I did manage to find some shreds of humor.
     ?I?ll take that that as a compliment, if you don?t mind.?
     ?Be my guest, Henry. After all, I?ve been yours all these years.? He nodded to the blue yonder. ?Shall we, ah, be off then??
     Moving into the empty space above the fields and trees seemed quite pointless and yet somehow intriguing. I looked at him more closely. A balding golfer without clubs: There must?ve been at least ten just like him at the office. As golf mad as the younger ones were girl crazy. I copied his nod.
     ?What about down there??
     ?That?s okay, they?re taken care of.?
     I looked down to see two rather waiflike women hovering over the wreckage. As I watched, one of them somehow, with a curling action not unlike smoke from a pipe, disappeared into it, reappearing seconds later with one of the boys, now strangely vibrant. I turned to the golfer, now grinning like a rather pompous sales manager at a month-end meeting.
     ?Are you people angels??
     ?You might say that. We try to help out when we?re needed.?
     ?And you?re going to take me to Heaven now??
     He took something out of his pocket and slipped it into his mouth. It could have been a mint. He didn?t offer me one and I immediately wished he had. I?d always liked mints and I did feel kind of parched.
     ?Well, it?s not exactly Heaven. It?s more like orientation week at college.?
     ?What, you mean lots of pretty girls and beer?? For a dead guy I thought that was pretty funny, but my golfing buddy showed no signs of amusement.
     ?Plenty of the former but not so much of the latter where we?re going.?
     I shuddered at the thought of the abstemious vision of the afterlife held by my deeply puritan parents, only some of the luggage I left at home decades before.
     ?And golf too, I suppose??
     He smirked. ?Only on the lower levels, I?m afraid.?
     Baffled, I allowed myself to be hand-held and whisked through space, rather like some mysterious boyhood shopping trip with my mother. At first we were flying over beautiful Pennsylvania, but quickly it all became a blur, then black, then very, very bright.

continues...