21

She filled my head with a ton of information in just seconds, but I’ll have to set it down here very roughly because I haven’t much time, only minutes, and my brain and my heart are exploding suns. The time that I’d died and come back, she explained, at the end of my “life review” it was clear my next stop would be limbo, or maybe the word that she used was “purgatory.” Not sure of it, okay? The Other Side. But it wouldn’t be in one of the better rooms, so Mom pleaded with God that I should get another chance because she’d died when I was born and wasn’t there to give me spiritual formation when I was young, which could have set me up to walk in the right direction. She’d blamed herself for her pneumonia just before I was born! Can you believe it? She said it all happened because of her vanity, insisting against Pop’s objections that she had to go out in a freezing storm to buy a couple of barrettes and a “really pretty robe” for her hospital stay. “Oh, please send Joey back to his childhood,” she’d pleaded. “I mean, only if just in his mind, so I can give him the formation he should have had and that I owe him! A few times when he’s little and can be molded, that’s all, and then you can see what choices he makes or that he would have made! Alright? You’re God, the God of Abraham and Jacob! You mean you can’t be the God of virtual reality?”

“Oh, Mom, you’re so beautiful!” I marveled.

She smiled and primped her hair for a second, then got up and came over to the side of my bed and I could swear the room was filled with the scent of mimosa.

“I guard!”

“Almost time, Joey. Time to go home. Pop’s waiting for you.”

“Really, Mom? Pop?”

“Oh, well, of course. He’s jumping up and down with wanting to see you. He’d be here now except he had this appointment.”

“What appointment? Inner Sanctum?”

Still smiling, she nodded, and said, “Something like that.”

“What’s it like there, Mom? Tell me!”

And now suddenly her smile became that rising of the moon I’d once seen in Jane, her face aglow with a joy she had no words to express but that she knew would never fade, not even long after the sun had grown cold and, beyond, when time no longer existed. She put her head back and her laughter flowed out in warm waves.

“Oh, my Joey, you have no idea! No idea!”

After that she looked down at me and placed her hand on top of mine, which I could see but couldn’t feel. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Oh, no, please! A few minutes! Can’t I have a few more minutes? I need to finish what I’m writing, Mom! Please! Five minutes! Okay, four! Give me four!”

“Go ahead,” she said softly. “Do what you can and we’ll see.”

Well, my fingers fairly flew at the laptop keyboard, completing these final four or five pages, and in parting let me say I’d like to thank my director and my wonderful cast and crew, my niece Emilia, and all the barbers who flew to location that elate a love a life a laugh along the

New York City

December 25, 2010