(Separated by Eternity)
by Amy Stonestrom
I had a secret growing up in church. I never told anyone, especially not Mom. I pictured the afterlife as a sterile environment where solemn souls sat in stiff metal chairs listening to Christian rock music while forced to attend bible study with Martin Luther. Would I be able to find my friends or family? Did they have Pringles? No one seemed to know for sure. (They were so sure about everything else.) My secret was this—heaven scared the hell out of me.
It was sad, Mom said, but scripture is very clear. The Muslims and Buddhists aren’t invited. The Catholics are iffy. It was too bad about the Mormons. Every Good Friday I was again reminded, the Jews didn’t have a prayer.
Mom and I drive the backroads in my Jeep on the way to an antique store. She says she is worried because I am struggling with my faith. It takes me a second to realize which one of us struggles with this. A few hours before, I told her that my husband and I weren’t returning to church and that our son wouldn’t be confirmed. Not in a Lutheran church or any other. This means her grandson is the first person in our family for, oh, at least several hundred years, not to attend confirmation classes every Wednesday or Saturday for two years when he turns thirteen. This bothers Mom immensely.
Although she remained quiet when I gave her this news, hurt and anger wrestled in her grey blue eyes behind her bifocals. Lutheran wasn’t something she just called herself—Lutheran was something that occupied her every molecule.
It did seem strange to not belong to a church. My most selfish and morbid thought always came to down to this: What would we do if my husband, son or I became really sick or was in need of, God forbid, a funeral? I know what those ladies serving the hot dish would think. Oh sure, now you come to church in your fancy coffin, when your family needs folding chairs and lemon bars. No one wants to be buried with that attitude.
It’s March—Lenten Season—and empty fields covered in blackened snow stand before the naked poplars in the distance. Pieces of road kill periodically emerge from icy tombs exposing a leg here, a patch of fur there. Helios has forgotten us. I can no longer imagine resurrection for any spring leaf or flower. Winter just won’t die this year. If there was a way to help Winter with this, and I mean help in a Doctor Kevorkian kind of way, we Northerners would gladly do it. Twelve years gone now, I can still hear Grandma Esther’s voice from the backseat. I even hear a bit of Midwest German catching in her throat. “Ach, everything’s so grey, when will we see green?
“What will your lives look like without church? Without faith?” Mom asks.
I know she is worried about her grandson, my husband and I not making the cut at St. Peter’s gate. This topic has been on her mind more than usual. All of our minds, actually. Evidence of mortality presented itself twelve months ago when Mom was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. She is doing well now—except for the worrying. Although there’s always been evidence of that.
The biggest secret I have (much bigger than the heaven one) is that I doubt Mom’s faith. Worrying and faith building are her two main pastimes. It never occurs to her that they might just cancel each other out. Knowing what’s good for me, I tie and gag that thought and throw in in the backseat with Grandma. Occasionally I check the rear view mirror to make sure it’s behaving itself.
“I’m really good with my spirituality. I’m happier than I ever have been,” I say.
I see Mom bristle and huff when I say the s-word. Now is probably a bad time to mention my recent Reiki training or the Thich Nat Hahn book I am reading. (A Buddhist studying/energy healing daughter is harder to explain at Mom’s missionary league than, say, an atheist or lesbian daughter.)
“I feel bad winning the afterlife lottery based solely on geography.”
“You can’t think that way,” she says, appalled by me.
I did though. Since I was born to a Christian family in mid-Minnesota, I could check “obtain eternal life” off my to-do list. Sure, it’s nice to be the trust fund baby of salvation but I still feel the need to turn my back on all the loot. Mom’s breast cancer year, still fresh, makes me more careful with my words. Normally I’d be all,“YOU can’t tell ME how to THINK, Mom.” But that’s not would Thich Nat Hahn would say now is it?
“If that’s how it really works, I’m not afraid to take one for the team,” I say finally.
“Which team?” Mom asks.
“The team of everyone who doesn’t qualify for salvation under our rules.” Team Bifurcation I call it. This team of the underworld wears helmets with flame stickers and coordinating yellow and red athletic gear. A bunch of us are drinking microbrews and discussing Nietzsche with—that’s right—Nietzsche while Cleopatra sings the karaoke version of Imagine. John Lennon claps politely but he’s not impressed. I hear chanting: “Char-lie, Char-lie, Char-lie.” I turn around, Darwin is doing a keg stand while Einstein and Sacagawea struggle to steady his feet. Janis Joplin is writing her number on Homer’s palm. Around the campfire, an empty chair in between Gandhi and Sitting Bull has Dan Brown’s name on it.
And I wish—more than anything—that Mom could join me here.
Amy Stonestrom is currently an MFA candidate in Bay Path University’s Creative Nonfiction program. She is also part of the year-long Memoir Writer’s Project at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Her work is forthcoming in Brevity magazine early next year and was selected for Montana Mouthful’s ‘Haunted’ edition. A landscape designer and home remodeler she lives on the Minnesconsin border with her husband, son and springer spaniel.