By Gigi Rice

 

4 versions of Heaven. 

 

I’m on a train on a Sunday, hurtling back towards the Big Smoke. 

I think a lot. 

I think a lot about a piece of paper on the wall at SCA. 

The paper said something like “The Big Beyond”. It was in Dee’s poetry workshop, perhaps on the second day of SCA. We were all invited to write on it and share thoughts of whatever this meant to us. 

I think about the Beyond alot. 

The Big Beyond. 

My dreams are extremely vivid. Every single night I can remember what I’ve dreamt about. Every nap, everytime. 

In one, I was back at my boarding school in the dorm I had when I was 14/15. I was in my bed in the dark when a doorframe of bright light from the bathroom appeared with a tall mans’ silhouette in it. 

Fear not, this isn’t a horror story. I knew who it was. A friend’s father whom had passed away several years prior. 

He walked forwards out of the light and to me. We talked. I asked him about Heaven and he said it’s real. I asked if people could have children in Heaven- he said No. However I take that to mean that people can’t reproduce, not that the young amongst us whom have handed over their mortality aren’t there. 

Therefore, 

1. The First Heaven 

In “You want a physicist to speak at your funeral” the speaker talks about the law of thermodynamics- that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. 

Therefore when we take our last gaping breaths. We slink away from our human forms but the output that the whirring machine of our bodies, our lives, created- can’t just stop. We must change. We do change. We remain but we curl ourselves into some other shape. And isn’t change the only thing in the world that is a real truth? Things always change. The winds always blow in the other direction. The seasons come and go. 

Skirts get longer. 

Skirts get shorter. 

Everyone likes Christmas pudding. 

No one likes Christmas pudding. 

Hence- You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

Moreover, in this First Heaven. We need no God. We need not get sore knees and stiff backs from asking up to an empty space. From holding the memories dear and alive by the use of a candle and match. In this Heaven, we are the match, the candle, the full house, the space between fingertips. 

It’s glorious. 

It’s glorious. 

Not a bit of you is gone, you’re just less orderly. 

2. The Second Heaven. 

In Neil Hilborns book “The Future” he says- 

Things that I hope are true about Heaven. 

That the radio always plays what would have been your favourite song. 

That there’s always coffee if you want it. 

That you’re there. 

That its real. 

So in my second Heaven, there is a God. And God, she runs a private members club. There are rooms of vast libraries and dark oak panelled shelves. A deep armchair in red. Nespresso whenever you want it. Eva Cassidy turns up the radio and Mina drinks a coffee that she calls “cup of Joe”. 

God often laughs at us. I still don’t know how often she appears back down below cause she doesn’t speak, just sits nearby. I have many questions in the second Heaven. 

Why? 

And why?

And why? 

Why? 

But sometimes it’s enough just to know that its happening, and the door is open. 

The dogs bark in the distance and I stand beside my Grandfathers. 

3. The third Heaven. 

I would like to tell you that it is beautiful here, that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe. But this heaven is not about safety just as, in its graciousness, it isn’t about gritty reality. We have fun. 

Alice Sebold. The Lovely Bones. 

This Heaven is joy. If there is a God, she is busy trying to call back customer services elsewhere. She is preoccupied with another phone call, with sadness and overspills. In the third Heaven there are no questions. There are waterparks and churros with butterscotch sauce. Here we walk on candy floss and wave to one another. I see Kyle as he dances, but know how it feels to still miss people. 

Like Susie Salmon, we look down upon the mess that God’s involved with. I watch as the surface of a Koi pond becomes a friends bedroom in Chicago, and skim the water with my fingers. 

That’s the only way you should ever really feel the dead. As a passing movement to be blamed on an open window or an unfounded reason for the dog to bark, and then go back to chasing squirrels. 

4. The fourth Heaven. 

The fourth Heaven is unlike the last three. If the last three are hegemonic political parties, this Heaven is Greta Thunberg. 

The best way to get to Heaven is to take it with you. 

Henry Drummond. 

Here there is no other room. Here I open my backpack and put it all in. I take last Friday lunchtime at Pop Brixton in the sunshine. I roll up my childhood home on a wintery evening and spicy vegan Chickpea curries. This Heaven is Good. It reminds me that it doesn’t have to be something I fear, fantasise about, or for which I simply just wait. 

It’s all here, all the time. If you choose to take it. 

However, this version suggests that there is no Beyond. Or at least, no separation between now and Beyond. As a child, I was scared of the dark, but now I sleep really well in it.

See you there, or Goodnight.