Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Another New Day

4:00 AM

Norma woke up very early, and Macky was snoring. She pushed him over onto his side and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. No matter how tired she was, once she was awake, she could never get back to sleep. As she lay there, she began to have anxious thoughts about what Aunt Elner had told her about seeing her mother and all the rest. True, it had obviously been some kind of a dream—walking around in the sky and going through a giant button, you would have to be an idiot to think otherwise—but still, there were certainly a lot of strange and unusual things that had taken place. They said that she really had been dead, and they had checked all the machines and they had been working just fine, and after all, as the doctor said, Aunt Elner did survive a fall that would have killed most people; then there was the fact that she could suddenly hear without her hearing aid. Could she possibly be telling the truth? Oh, dear. Last night she had been so sure, but as usual, now she was scared she might be wrong. Maybe Aunt Elner had not been dreaming. The longer she thought about it, Norma began to wonder if maybe this might be the sign, wonder, or miracle she had prayed for. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true? Maybe there really was an afterlife. She got up out of bed and quietly picked out her clothes and tiptoed out of the bedroom.

She put on her makeup and got dressed and left a note on the coffeepot for Macky.

Honey, couldn’t sleep, so I have gone to the hospital to see Aunt Elner. Call you later at work.

Love, Me

Before she drove out of town, Norma decided to run by Elner’s house on the way and pick up her hairbrush and a few other things she might need while she was still in the hospital. It was still dark when she arrived, and when she opened the front door and turned on the lights, she was astonished at how neat the place looked. She would have to thank Tot and Ruby for doing such a nice job of cleaning up. While she was in the bedroom, she stopped for a second and seriously thought about taking down that photograph of those hideous little rats jumping around in the sand that Aunt Elner had cut out of a National Geographic magazine and Scotch-taped to the wall above her bed. She had been able to get rid of that robe, and now was probably her only chance to get rid of this, but she didn’t do it, and it took every ounce of strength not to. She went over and opened the dresser and got out two of the new nightgowns she had given Elner for Christmas and picked up her hearing aid as well, better safe than sorry. Aunt Elner could hear fine yesterday, but you never know.

And as far as Norma was concerned, that was the main problem with life. You never knew what was going to happen from minute to minute, and more than anything in this world, Norma hated a surprise. As she headed toward Kansas City, she realized that if someone had told her a few days ago that she would be on her way to the hospital this morning to see Aunt Elner, she would not have believed it. Why did this have to happen now?

Just when she had finally finished decorating her new town home, had gotten through menopause without murdering anybody, had dropped five pounds, and after forty-three years of marriage, her and Macky’s love life was exactly like she had always wanted it to be—on schedule, once a week, every Sunday afternoon at around four or five, depending on what else was going on. She liked that it took place on Sunday; it lifted it up out of the ordinary, into a more spiritual event, more in keeping with the marriage vow, rather than just doing it on the whim of the moment, like Macky wanted to.

Being an organized person, she liked to know exactly what was going to happen, and when. She wanted to have time to take a nice hot bath, put on some pretty music, and make a real occasion out of it. After all, Macky was still a good-looking man who had most of his sandy-colored hair, but he had never understood why she had not wanted to just drop everything and jump into bed without any advance notice or warning. He wanted to be “spontaneous,” he had said. Of course, when they were younger she had gone along with it, just to keep him happy; men can get their feelings hurt so easily. She had no idea what other people did or how often they did it. That was a subject she would never discuss with anyone, and she had been so relieved when she’d learned that by the time Linda had reached that certain age sex education was being taught in high school, and she did not have to have the birds and the bees conversation.

When she was growing up, people did not talk about their sex life the way they do now, and she preferred it that way. Even though she leaned toward being a little prudish on the subject, she was not frigid by any means—a fact that delighted Macky, but embarrassed her and still made her blush. “You don’t have to talk about it, Macky,” she would say whenever Macky would compliment her about how sexy she was. But it did please her, and every once in a while she would take her special bubble bath on a Wednesday or Thursday just to surprise him; unlike her, he did not need to be forewarned. She supposed all men were like that, but she certainly was not going to ask. Norma and Macky had been going steady since the seventh grade and married at eighteen. Norma had never dated another boy so her knowledge of the opposite sex was limited to Macky Warren and that was fine with her. She liked her life exactly as it was right now, and wouldn’t you know it, just when she finally had everything under control, Aunt Elner picked this very time to have some crazy near-death experience and get her all confused!

Norma arrived at the hospital in time for breakfast. The orderly had just placed Elner’s breakfast tray on her table.

“Well, hey!” said Elner when Norma walked in. “How did you get here so early?”

“I decided to try and beat the traffic. How are you this morning?”

“My bites are itching a little, but other than that I’m fine. Have you come to take me home?”

“I don’t know yet. I hope so, but I haven’t talked to the doctors.”

“I hope so too, I’m ready to go home. Look at this,” said Elner, holding up a biscuit. “Hard as a rock. Oh well, the scrambled eggs are pretty good, but all they give you here is apple jelly. Have you had your breakfast?”

“No, not yet.”

“Don’t you want some of this?”

“No. You eat it all, you need your strength. Everybody at home sends their love, I think some of the girls might be coming over later. Did you sleep all right?”

“Oh, sure, except they kept waking me up all night giving me shots and taking all my vitals. They sure keep an eye on you here, too much so, if you ask me.” She showed Norma her cup. “Look, this coffee is not very strong. Maybe later on you’ll get me some from somewhere else.”

“I will, but I had something I wanted to ask you.”

“What?”

“Well…about what you told me yesterday…about your…” She looked around, and whispered, “Visit?”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk about it?” Elner whispered back.

“You can talk to me, just not anybody else. Tell me again, exactly, what were the messages you were supposed to deliver?”

“Well, let’s see…Raymond said, ‘The world is getting better all the time,’ and things of that nature.”

“Uh-huh…and what did Neighbor Dorothy say again?”

“She said that life is what you make it, and what you make it is up to you. Smile, and the world is sunny.”

“And that was it?”

“Pretty much so. Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I guess I expected something a little more profound, more complex, than ‘Life is what you make it.’”

“Me too, but I think that’s the good news, life is not as complicated as we thought.”

“Are you sure that’s all they said? Did they say anything about the end of the world?”

“Not specifically, but Raymond did say to hang in there. I think that’s a positive message myself.”

“Oh, yes, but positive thinking is not all that new. I was hoping for something with more of a revelation, something we haven’t heard before.”

“Well, Norma, just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t make it wrong.”

“No, I understand that, but—”

The door suddenly swung open and a nurse said, “Mrs. Shimfissle, we have a radio station calling, wanting to do a live feed with you…somebody named Bud?”

Elner’s eyes lit up. “Oh, it’s the Bud and Jay show! Can I tell them about the chicken and the egg? I won’t say where I heard it.”

“Oh my God,” thought Norma, “Aunt Elner, you are not going on the radio, let me talk to them.”

A few minutes later Bud of the Bud and Jay show said to his listening audience, “Well, folks, just spoke to Elner Shimfissle’s niece in Kansas City, and she says Mrs. Shimfissle can’t come to the phone quite yet but that she’s fine, and sends us all her regards. And now, Mrs. Shimfissle, if you are listening…here’s a song just for you this morning…. Here’s Miss Della Reese singing ‘What a Difference a Day Makes.’”

When she came back in, Norma sat and stared at Elner like she was a bug, trying to observe her actions to see if she could tell if she seemed to be in her right mind, but with so many people in and out of her room, it was hard to tell. But so far she seemed normal, if you could call Aunt Elner’s regular behavior normal.