The End Game:
Purgatory vs. Hell
The last thing I remember was riding my Harley 90 miles per hour in the fast lane. Then all is black. And quiet.
The first thing I think is - at least I am thinking. But I cannot hear, see, touch, or move. My second thought is - am I dead? Third - how would I know?
I am not aware of breathing. I think - if I am dead, where is the light and the tunnel hovering above me? Where is the intergalactic bus to ride to heaven? All there is the black stillness, and my thoughts. And if there is any time, I don’t know about it.
Black continues. I think - awareness is probing the blackness with no result. I wonder if this is the way it is going to be forever. I attempt to squeeze and squint the eyes that I don’t have and try to parse the black. Then - I am elated that at last and at least, I find a memory.
It isn’t remarkable. I am riding on a country road, passing a motorist on the driver’s side. What’s that? I decide to flip the guy the bird as I rev my engine. He is startled, then angry, and I laugh to myself at the bozo. That is the end of my memory - now I am back in the black. For a long time, almost forever.
But finally I see a flicker - the tiniest of a spark. I can feel a rush of the slightest hope for having to escape the blackness, albeit almost microscopic, like the spark. Then, the flicker expands exponentially until I think I perceive what seems to turn into a few frames on an old black-and-white TV screen. The man who is driving the car veers off the road and crashes into a tree. The TV screen flashes, and the circle of light descends smaller and smaller until it is gone, leaving it completely black. Total blackness returns.
I think - did this really happen? Or is this just a dream? Later, back in the black eternity - don’t tell me how long and when - I decide to attempt another memory. I squeeze and squint with the eyes that I don’t have to escape the eternal blackness once again.
After another unknown length of black nothingness, my memory flickers. I find myself in a bar, stone drunk. A woman who is even more drunk and raucous than I is climbing on top of me, thrusting harder and harder in the backseat of her car. That was the end of that memory. I am back in the blackness. Then a spark darts and grows into the TV screen that flashes, then blinks, then fast forward to the birth of a tiny infant - a girl, my daughter, I never knew existed - until now. I wonder if she is alive, where she is, what she is like. And what she thinks about me, the father she never knew.
As my eternity continues, my memories do as well. Taking down a co-worker, spreading lies that accidentally cost her job. It is not my intention to go that far, but that doesn’t help her any. I shrug it off. What do I care?
Memories of abandoning my father, refusing to speak to him for decades, which I know cost him his life, and does not matter to me. Cheating my best friend for a few thousand dollars to peddle cocaine, costing dozens of addicts. Refusing to help my mother when she was in most need, costing her health.
My memories fade away at the same time the TV screen disappears into darkness. I feel despair. Horror. Eternity.
Long past forever, another spark flickers, and while I see a faint light grow, it continues growing. Infinitely slowly it grows.
I take a breath - a real breath of real air. I hear the ICU doctors and nurses gasp as they scurry to bring me back to life. I can hear them, feel them, and my eyes open, and I see them. I think back to the endless blackness, and I realize that for who knows what reason, I am relieved, restored, and alive.
If the blackness is hell, it will always be just that. But I now know if there is even an undeserved light flickering, at the cost of making proper, sincere, and just amends, I know it is a better path.
I decide I’d take purgatory over hell any time.
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