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My wife says her idea of heaven is where everything that is bad for us here on Earth will be good for us after we die. Skeptical as I am, I instantly liked the idea.
I could spend at least a trillion years repeatedly stuffing Kanye West into a cement mixer filled with porcupines before I got tired of listening to him scream about it.
Him: "How can you do this to Mr. Number One? Huh? I got the top album in the wor-[click]-YEEZUSSSSS!"
Me: "I need more porcupines!"
This spiritual reverie was interrupted by my wife saying that she was actually talking about cheesecake and chocolate éclairs.
OK, fine. I have no idea what happens after we die. And for all the blathering they do about it, neither does anyone else.
Yes, I'm talking about near-death experience (NDE) claims. No offense, but our brains start lying to us the second we're born and don't stop doing it until we're dead. And I mean fully dead.
I'll believe an NDE claim when the person relating it was all the way dead. None of this waking up an hour later and saying heaven is like Disneyland only free, or that angels gave them a painless bikini wax.
I mean dead, embalmed, and in the ground for, oh, say, a year at least. That's dead. Anyone who experiences an FDE (fully dead experience) has to claim they saw that cement mixer thing in heaven (or hell). Then I'll believe.
I can't remember when I stopped wondering about what happens when we die, which so far as I understand, seems to include everyone regardless of how much we wish to avoid it.
If there is a heaven and I get there, it will transcend any measly imagination I have right now. If there isn't one, it won't matter.
What happens isn't as important to me as how it happens. I'd like it to be as gentle as possible, and that it doesn't stress out my family too much. That's it.
There's nothing I can do about what happens after that other than to be as good as I can possibly be here. Not so I'll fare well in some pearly gates accounting, but rather so that my last thoughts aren't ones of regret.
Maybe heaven is like they say in church, which, no offense, is vague enough to be absolutely useless in the here and now.
There could be streets paved with gold, celestial mansions, harp strumming, choir singing, and joyous reunions with loved ones who didn't end up going to hell instead. That all sounds perfectly boring.
If heaven is anything at all like church I'd rather go somewhere else. Yeah, I might change my mind later, but since it won't be up to me I might as well not waste time now worrying about it.
It could be like atheists say, that we simply slide away into nothingness, nevermore to be seen or heard from again except maybe on YouTube.
There's even a certain comfort in that. I learned long ago that consciousness is the first requirement in being scared or remorseful. If you're not awake, a judge can yell at you until his butt falls off and you just can't care.
But the truth is that I hope something nice happens after we die. There are people I love who deserve it for putting up with me. If you have to ask, you're not one of them.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby/