Chapter 8 #2
Come on, God, I pleaded silently, clutching my rosary. This is it. This is the big one. Do it. Do it now! Fill them up. Please, God! Open their hearts before we hit the gift shop!
The exhibit was beautiful—the theology of a single door and its connection to the Gospel of John: I am the door.
It highlighted how God, after shutting Noah’s family safely inside the Ark, ultimately offered that same door of rescue to everyone.
I’d read about it online and known it would be the most moving part.
I stood beside my widows and watched them, anticipation fluttering in my chest.
Alice looked at the light. Sylvie admired the craftsmanship. Marge checked her watch.
“Well, this was actually really cool, Doris! Great wish,” Marge said.
“Looks like it took us two hours to finish, so if I speed a little on the highway later, we can spend an hour or two before we hit the road. Sylvie, you can get your camel ride, and then we’ll check out the petting zoo. I have an appointment with a kangaroo.”
She grinned as the other widows nodded in agreement.
My heart deflated like a punctured tire. I didn’t say a word, just followed behind them like my legs were filled with lead as we walked out the exit and straight into the bright, bustling gift shop.
As they perused the knickknacks, I struggled to understand why God had showed me the Ark adventure on that Google search.
It had popped up as an ad, and I’d thought it had been a sign.
How we were so close to it on my leg of the journey when I took over as captain.
Like He was pointing Bertha straight toward it so I could lead them to salvation.
Instead, I led them to a gift shop where Sylvie held a small Ark miniature, wondering if it would look good on her Christmas tree.
I stopped dead in my tracks. A sob, jagged and hot, burst out of me.
Tears started to flow so fast that I could have caused another flood and floated away in this new Ark.
The girls were at my side in an instant.
“Doris, honey, what’s wrong?” Sylvie’s hand was on my back. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
“Did someone push you?” Marge’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed the shoppers around us. “Tell me who hurt you. Him?” She pointed at an unassuming man browsing the biblical postcards. “Did he do something? I’ll shove him right down the manure dumper if he so much as touched you.”
I couldn’t answer, instead standing in the middle of the gift shop sobbing with my whole body and soul.
He glanced up, looked over both his shoulders, then pointed at himself.
“Yeah, you!” Marge growled. “Did you make her cry?”
He frantically shook his head and hurried away.
“Who the hell made her cry?” Marge directed to everyone in the vicinity, looking ready to throw down in front of the church group full of little girls in plaid skirts.
“Doris, please. What’s wrong?” Alice rubbed my arm.
“I… It… It didn’t work!” I wailed. “I... I failed!”
I didn’t care that a family of five likely from Ohio was staring at me.
“No one hurt you?” Marge asked, her voice softening.
“No,” I managed, wiping my nose. “No one hurt me.”
Her anger deflated instantly, and she heaved a heavy sigh. “Cripes. I thought some pervert got ahold of you when my back was turned.”
I shook my head, more people staring as another loud wail broke from deep within me.
“She’s, uh… emotional from the experience,” Marge announced to the onlookers with a firm nod.
Several people nodded with immediate understanding. One woman pressed her hand to her own heart sympathetically.
“Of course. It moved me to tears as well,” a gentleman said, giving me a sympathetic smile as he walked away.
“See!” I sobbed, pointing at him. “He gets it! They all get it! You’re supposed to be moved! That was my wish! My wish was that you’d be filled with the Holy Spirit and become believers!”
They went dead silent, three sets of eyes widening in sync.
“What?” Sylvie breathed. “What do you mean?”
I tried to stiffen my lip. Stop the tears that refused to turn off. “It’s nothing. Never mind. It’s fine. I’m being silly.”
“You’re not fine. And anything making you cry like this isn’t silly. Come over here.” Marge took me by the elbow, and the four of us walked to a quiet corner and settled onto a bench. “Okay, Doris. Spill. What the heck is happening?”
I took a breath. It came out ragged. “My wish. My real wish. The one I didn’t say out loud.
” I looked at each of them and then dropped the unbearable weight I’d been carrying for too long.
“I wanted you to be filled with the Holy Spirit when you walked out of here. I wanted God to reach down and fill you up, and then I wouldn’t have to be so scared anymore. ”
They were very still.
“Scared of what?” Sylvie asked.
“Of losing you.” The tears started again, and there was no stopping them.
“I’m scared of losing you forever. Because I believe in Heaven.
I’ve always believed in Heaven. And Axel believes.
And Harold believed. And my parents and my children and everyone I’ve ever loved—everyone believes.
And then I met you three.” I pressed my hands together.
“And it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. But you don’t believe.
And if you don’t believe, you don’t go to Heaven.
And if you don’t go to Heaven, then I have to spend my entire afterlife without you.
And if you aren’t there... then it isn’t Heaven at all! ”
They pressed against me, their bodies like a shield as they surrounded me.
“Doris, oh. I’m… I’m so sorry. We didn’t know that was what you were expecting in there,” Sylvie soothed.
I turned to Alice, my heart breaking. “And you... you’re sick. What if the surgery doesn’t work? What if you die and I never see you again because you were too stubborn to pray and—”
I collapsed into another round of heaving sobs.
I couldn’t finish. Sylvie’s arms came around me, and I let her hold me for a moment.
“Oh, Doris,” Alice whispered, rubbing my shoulder. “You’re afraid we won’t be in Heaven with you.”
“How is it Heaven without you? Heaven is supposed to be paradise, but without you three, I just can’t imagine the eternal happiness I’ve always known awaits me there.
” I pulled back and looked at them, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
“So what does that mean for me? I spend eternity sad and missing you? Or does God put me out of my misery and erase you from my memory so I don’t mourn you?
” That thought stole the air from my lungs, and I struggled to breathe.
“I don’t want Him to make me forget you!
I don’t want to forget everything! But I don’t want to miss you all forever, either! I can’t… I don’t…”
I sobbed harder, struggling to breathe as I imagined every laugh, every memory, wiped from my mind so I wouldn’t be the one person in Heaven grieving for my entire afterlife.
“Breathe, sweetie. You’re okay.” Sylvie rubbed my back.
I inhaled a shaky breath. “That’s what I keep thinking.
All my life I’ve looked forward to Heaven because it means seeing everyone I love again.
But now—now you’re my people. You’re my very best people.
And the thought of going there one day and you not being there because you couldn’t”—I stopped, looked at Alice—“because you ran out of time before you found God—”
“Oh, Doris.” Alice’s voice was soft in a way it didn’t often get.
“It’s not Heaven without you,” I finished. “It would just be a nice place with other people I love but not you.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Marge sat down beside me and looked at me with an unexpectedly gentle expression I didn’t often see on her face.
“Can I say something?” she said.
I nodded.
“There are thousands of religions in the history of the world, Doris. Thousands. And they all have different rules about what happens when you die and who gets in and what the whole operation looks like. And here’s what I know after over seventy years on this earth.
” She folded her hands. “Nobody knows. Every single one of those religions is based on faith, but no one truly knows.”
She looked around at the gift shop, at the wooden Ark on the shelves, at the families around us.
“Maybe one of them is exactly right. Maybe they’re all a little right.
Maybe none of them are. But I’ll tell you what I cannot believe.
” She met my eyes. “I cannot believe that if there is a God who built all of this”—she gestured upward and outward, at the Ark, at everything—“he would make you spend eternity without us. You’ve been praying for us for years.
You’ve been good enough for four people your whole life.
I think if anyone’s earned a favor, it’s you. And I think your favor is us.”
I stared at her.
“Maybe,” she continued, “you’re so good, and your prayers are so loud, that He’ll just drag us up there along with you whether we deserve it or not. You’re our loophole, Doris. You always have been.”
“You really think that?” I whispered.
“I think that if He can fit seven thousand animals on a wooden boat and invent a self-managing manure system in the Bronze Age, He can figure out how to get three delinquents into heaven on your behalf.”
A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob came out of me.
“You’re always our savior, Doris,” Alice said, rubbing my shoulder. “I don’t see why that would change just because we’re dead.”
Sylvie squeezed my hand. “You’ve been carrying this the whole time and never said anything?”
“I didn’t want to make it about me,” I said. “It’s Alice’s cancer. It’s not about my feelings about Heaven.”
“Your feelings about Heaven are allowed to exist,” Sylvie said firmly. “They don’t take anything away from Alice.”
Alice nodded once, confirming this.