I DIED
By Harry E. Berndt
I dreamed that I died and woke up in a place with no name, or at least no name I knew. I dreamed that I said to myself: “Well, here I am. But where”? In my dream I died, but I am not really sure of where I finally landed. The body was to be cremated and the ashes buried in the backyard with the pets, but here I am in a place not named. It doesn’t seem like much – wherever it is. It isn’t one of those places we learned about in catechism Class. I could never figure out what people were talking about when they spoke of Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, or even Limbo where babies not baptized ended up. This can’t be Heaven, because Heaven is supposed to be a great place to go. No one ever said why it was so great or even what made it great, except that you got to see God, and St. Peter let you in if you were worthy. Most people seemed to figure that they were going to end up in Heaven because they were good, which means that they didn’t kill anyone who didn’t need to be killed, didn’t smoke or drink too much, didn’t steal, fornicated only when their passions got the best of them, for which they were sorry, and they voted straight Republican. The Bible has the poor in spirit going to Heaven, and Heaven is where God and His Angels are located, so it must be a place. The Bible refers to Heaven as a Kingdom, i.e., the Kingdom of Heaven. It seems that it is supposed to be a happy place where the good people go when they die. I don’t think this is it.
Hell, on the other hand, is another matter, I thought. You would know if you were in Hell, unless you were in Purgatory, which is like Hell except that you are supposed to be able to get out, whereas hell is for keeps. Lots of people say that Hell is right here in the earth, but in the lower regions of the earth, an area of fire and brimstone. Those assigned there suffer until judgment day when everyone gets a chance to learn about them and then, I guess, they get sent back to Hell. Dante identified nine circles of Hell and placed all of his political enemies in Hell according to their particular crimes, sins, or reasons for him to hate them. In his Inferno, Hell contained many conditions of pain, none of which was very pleasant, and there were circles of both fire and ice, with the ninth and last circle being frozen. I don’t think this is Hell.
Dante waited for Virgil to lead him to the river Acheron and to the steersman Charon, who would ferry them across Acheron and into hell, but I can’t think of anyone who would do that for me. I don’t know how that happened for Dante, since he and Virgil lived at different times. Wouldn’t it be great if, say Walt Whitman, would come by and take me by the hand and say that he would lead me through Hell and Purgatory and take me to Paradise where I would meet up with my fantasy woman who would lead me through all the levels of Paradise where we would meet the Angels and Saints and where the mysteries of life and death and Justice and Love would all be explained. I doubted that that would happen.
I dreamed that I doze off in this unlikely room of no description and woke to find Walt Whitman. This is the very thing I wondered about! But he doesn’t take my hand to lead me through Heaven and Hell. He explains that a friend who loved me very much worried that I was in danger of ending up in the worst place possible and she asked Walt to straighten me out. “Obviously you were denied the benefits of Faith”, he said, “or you would not be in the fix you are in.” “But if that is true, how is it my fault”, I asked? “Like everything else that goes wrong in life”, he said, “it’s your mother’s fault, and I can’t help you.”
I awakened in a cold sweat and was very fearful until I realized that it was nothing but a dream. But was it only a dream and nothing more? Freud explained that dreams have meaning. As I thought about that I became very calm, almost happy. The dream gave me the secret of a happy life: IT’S NOT MY FAULT!
Webster Groves, Missouri
January 21, 2011
785 words
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