No matter how miserable Dad felt in life, his answer to the question How are you? was always “Marvelously well, thank you.” Always. He might change his tone, moving from enthusiastic to tired to silly. But he was always “marvelously well.” Now it is Mom’s turn to answer all the retired older ladies at church when they put their arm around her shoulder and squeeze and ask How are you? She begins with a simple, “I’m fine.” But then she explains how she is not sad, that she is happy, because when she pictures her husband of 62 years in the afterlife, “I can see him running and jumping!” she says. Always running and jumping, and not alone either, but with my ebullient sister Sarah, and with his beloved sister Louise, and with his tender grandmother Natalia. They are all running and jumping. In the afterlife, apparently, people do a lot of running and jumping and who knows what else. And who am I to say that all the good souls in the afterlife aren’t running and jumping and rolling down green grassy hills? It is possible that Mom is simply willing herself to be cheerful and to think hopeful happy thoughts. Maybe Mom can’t tolerate the sadness and loneliness and is casting about for some glimmer to grasp. But perhaps she really believes it, that her husband is no longer old and sick and paralyzed, that her sweetheart is running and jumping his way to heaven, a now young and vibrant and carefree soul (though after 3½ years of caring for my old and sick and paralyzed father, I have a hard time envisioning his frolicking). But why can’t a frolicking afterlife be true? And why not believe it even if she can’t yet fully know? The very thought of her Nelson running and jumping uninhibited in heaven makes her happy, and what’s wrong with that?
Rabbit Lane 