ON HIS WAY TO HEAVEN

We're all part of a story that both pre- and post-dates us....

Jemmy McKiver had spent all of his long life quite sure that he was on his way to Heaven … or would be when his own personal last trumpet sounded and he reached the ending of his days. His dad had made sure he knew, thrashed a love for Heaven into his tender young flesh, you might say.

Once adult enough for people to take note of him he’d preached it as the Reverend McKiver. He’d spent almost unbelievably delirious hours in his pulpit explaining what it would be like once mortal coils were shuffled off and his flock was free to roam.

And there would be freedom and limitless roaming … he knew that with much the same positive certainty as he knew he had a mole on his nose. Remember that, dear reader, the mole: it may have a greater significance later on!

He went on to describe the fields he and they would be free to wander through. Fields of gold, heavy with the fragrance of the flowers that grew season on season in the Heavenly dales. And all the time they would be happy in the knowledge that they were being looked after.

Their Heavenly Father would be guarding them. Ever-vigilant, He would be protecting them from any chance of pain or danger. When Jemmy was rapturously pronouncing this he gave little thought to what dangers there might be in a place of perfection but preached it anyway it so that everyone had the same sense of security pervading their minds as he had.

So Jemmy McKiver grew older and his voice became increasingly feeble, but the message was always the same. More years ago than he cared to remember he’d learned his lesson well. He and his flock were biding their time and would, sooner rather than later (that with a twisted half-smile) find themselves eventually in Paradise.

And all because they believed.

Yes, he averred, belief was the one qualification for admittance to the Hereafter. All else was irrelevant.

He was in his nineties and not feeling so well when he met Dr. Bilgeworthy. Dr Bilgeworthy was the newly appointed GP to the surgery that he attended, and Dr Bilgeworthy was, to put it mildly, a non-believer.

“I’ve seen the human body go wrong, and it’s no pleasant sight,” he told people, even if they didn’t want to know. Then: “I’ve seen babies die in agony from this or that reprehensible condition. I’ve seen nuns and nurses pray over their young but emaciated bodies, and never noticed any reduction in the agonies preceding death. So it seems to me that praying does no good at all. Praying might even be counter-productive if loved ones put their efforts into dear-lording it when they might, instead, put their efforts into medicine and science!”

And that doctor with those ideas called on the Reverend Jemmy McKiver because that good cleric was in his nineties and, according to his housekeeper, dying.

“I’m sure he’ll not see the day out, Doctor,” she said, “I’ve never seen a man look so bad and still be breathing, and that’s a fact.”

Doctor Bilgeworthy called on the dying cleric. In fact, he more than called on him he made haste and rushed to see him.

“I hear, sir, that you’re not so well,” he began when he saw the pallid skin of his patient and heard the painful gasping breathing that sounded, to him, like the very first syllable of a raucous “farewell”.

Jemmy wanted to tell the doctor that he was on his way to Heaven, a day he’d been dreaming of ever since he’d started dreaming way back when his own earthly Reverend father had taken his belt to him for not praying loud enough, but it came out as little more than “blah...”

Doctor Bilgeworthy consulted his notes and nodded sagely as if he understood every painful nuance of that “blah”. He had a good bedside manner, did Doctor Bilgeworthy, one steeped in sympathy and understanding and a genuine need to comfort his patients at times of stress.

“But you are ninety-two,” he smiled, “a big and noble age to be sure. It’s been a long innings, and let’s see if we can’t make it even longer...” as he wrapped the cuff of his blood-pressure monitor round his patient’s arm.

Jemmy wanted to explain to this unwelcome visitor that the last thing he wanted was an extension to his time in God’s waiting room, that he’d been around for far too long already and really and truly couldn’t wait to arrive in Paradise where he’d search out his own long deceased father out and give him a huge and long-overdue piece of his mind about some of the things he’d done to the growing boy way back when punishment had been the order of the day and pain the result.

But “Blah...” he gasped out, clothing his entire speech in that simple, painful syllable.

“Very high,” frowned the good doctor. “Your blood-pressure’s a bit on the very high side. It’s not a good sign. I’ll have to prescribe something to bring it down a bit...”

The good Reverend Jemmy tried to explain that it was too late for anything like pills and potions, that quite a long time ago, in his far-off childhood, his own father, the Reverend McKiver Senior had tried to treat his bruises and weals and other contusions of his flesh with pills and potions, and none of them had worked and not even excesses of prayer had done much, so it was only natural that any moment now he should find his way to Paradise where that father would be waiting for him. Yes, waiting: the bitter bully had promised, on his own death bed, that he’d be waiting for the boy when they were both on the other side and that he’d thrash the living daylights out of him for making him wait more than half an hour. So he’d be waiting, and it had been for a lot longer than half an hour too.

Why, the Reverend Jemmy McKiver had been but a boy when his outrageous dad had died, poisoned by the judicious addition of a quantity of rat poison in his home-brewed beer when he hadn’t been looking.

They’d meet in Heaven, all right, and everything would be put right under the benevolent gaze of the Heavenly father!

He was about to scratch that mole on his nose one last time, my God wasn’t it itching all of a sudden, but his hand faltered on its way and his heart, suddenly, decided that his time was up.

Doctor Bilgeworthy sighed and screwed up the prescription he’d been writing and produced a blank Certificate of Death from his Gladstone bag instead. Knowing nothing about rat poison he felt a moment’s pity for the dead old cleric, and moved on.

Meanwhile, Jemmy’s world went and stayed hugely blank and featureless for a new kind of forever.