Best of the Brine

Celebrating our 20th "Best of the Brine"! Wowza! Thanks for reading, hope your eyes haven't bled yet. ;) Also, last month we celebrated one year of blogging (fairly) consistently! Crazy, right?!

Gone

Among those in heaven, it has long been known that their return to their loved ones  on Earth would occur at a distant point in the future. But that is only among the dead, otherwise known as insider information.
So, how is it that I have come upon this knowledge?

It really just dropped on my head the moment my real eyes, those made with flesh and blood and DNA, closed for the last time. I had one more living thought, and then I was somewhere else. The street that I had been smeared across was gone, and I was surrounded by white.

There was no pain, no blood, just my favorite outfit as I stared down at my body. The white slowly drifted away from me and a gate appeared several yards away. It was the single most beautiful structure I had ever seen. A metallic substance unknown to me that shimmered when the light hit it at every angle twisted around itself and skyrocketed upwards. Just to the right of it stood a podium, with a thick book and quill pen resting on top of it.

I approached the podium, beginning to feel strange about the fact that there was no one else within eyesight. In delicate handwriting I saw the list. Thousands, or more like millions, of names were etched into the pages along with a date. I skimmed the list, seeing a few names I recognized from the past few years and days, until I reached the last name.

It wasn't mine.
Silently, I wondered if I was supposed to write my own name in. I dismissed the notion since every other name on the list had been written in the same beautiful cursive. There was no variation at all. No one else had written in their names upon arrival. Someone had been here to greet them. But I stood at an empty podium and an empty gate.

For another moment, I considered putting down my name and came to the conclusion that it was the right thing to do. Whoever was usually at the podium might need to know I had been there. I tried my hardest to make my writing legible with the ethereal pen and then set it back down just the way I had found it.

Turning to the gate, I couldn't imagine it would be easy to get through it without someone opening it for me. But as I approached it, the huge doors swung open, revealing a long road that stretched out for what seemed like forever. So I began my journey down the road, considering the fact that it might take me an eternity.

After only a few moments, I noticed a golden sign floating above me. It read simply: Touch the place in your heart that you wish to be, and it will be so. Love travels the greatest distance. It was rather inspirational to give me any kind of concrete answer, but I decided to try it. There was still no one around, so if it didn't work, at least no one would see me acting a fool.

Hesitantly, I placed my hand over my heart and thought about a place I wanted to go. The first place that came to mind was the smell of cookies and mint and fresh cut flowers. My surroundings shimmered until I recognized where I was.

My grandmother's house came into focus around me. Cookies were cooling on the counter, a small glass bowl of mints sat on the center of the kitchen table and fresh cut flowers were bunched together in vase on the windowsill. It was exactly how I remembered it. Except for one thing that was missing: my grandmother.

"Grandma?" I asked in a small voice.

No response came. So, I searched the house and backyard with no success. She was gone, just as everyone seemed to be. Had there been some big, important meeting called?

My curiosity had been sparked, so I started to visit every place I had ever loved to try and find someone, anyone, who could answer my question.

But with each place, I only found more of the same: nothing and no one. After a dozen places, I finally resorted to visiting anywhere I could think of that would have a large amount of people. Disneyworld. Yankee Stadium. The Eiffel Tower. No one. Everywhere was empty. I began to worry that something was wrong.



How could anything be wrong? It was heaven. Wasn't it? Still, everything had been sort of off since my arrival. Then again, I had never died before and certainly wasn't sure of heavenly etiquette. I guess I had just expected not to be alone.

It wasn't until my last attempt to find someone that I came upon my first stroke of luck. A woman, wearing a tea-length print dress and pearls twirled in front me. Her brown hair was swept back into a bun and she danced by herself to music I hadn't heard in a very long time. There was something about her that was familiar, but I couldn't place it.

"Hello?" I asked.

She stopped and looked at me with surprise. Her eyes immediately filled with sadness. "Oh my dear, what are you doing here?"

Alarm at the way she was looking at me hit me in the chest. "I could ask you the same thing, since you're the first person I've come across."

Her hands fell to her sides, where she smoothed down her skirt. "I died, and now I'm in heaven."

"Yes, but," I sighed in frustration. "Where is everyone else?"

After taking several steps towards me and lacing her fingers through mine she smiled. "You don't recognize me, do you?"

I shook my head.

"I am Greta," she stated.

A name written in delicate cursive pushed its way to the forefront of my mind, along with a memory of an elderly woman who lived down the street from my family. She had been good friends with my grandmother and had loved my mother like her own daughter.

I hadn't recognized her because of the youth that had taken over her. She was beautiful.

"Greta," I whispered into her shoulder as I hugged her tightly. Only the day before I thought I would never see her again. She had passed away after a long fight with cancer. The funeral was planned for Friday, and I would miss it.

"What happened to you, darling?" She asked.

I released my hold on her slowly. "I'm not sure, the details are fuzzy. But, I think I was hit by something, a car maybe?"

"Yes, but why are you here?" Her eyes seemed to reflect my own confusion.

"Because I died." Somehow speaking it out loud made it all too real and a pain set in throughout my body.

Greta's arm snaked around my waist, and we began to walk together. "You know something? I prepared my entire life to get here, especially those last few months. It isn't exactly what I thought it would be, but it's everything I wanted."

I shrugged. "I guess I hadn't really thought about it much."

She smiled. "Well, you were young!"

"I know."

She stopped and tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. "Tell me something. What did you think about last?"

My mind travelled to that moment and all the terror that I had felt. "I didn't want to die."

She looked at me for a long moment. "So why are you here?"

I thought the question odd. "Greta, it's not like I had a choice in the matter. Did you?"

She stifled a laugh. "Of course I didn't. But I didn't go back either."

My mind froze at her words. "What do you mean?"

"I had been waiting so long to get here that just spending a single day didn't seem fair. So when the time came, I choose to stay here. Like you did."

If I could have had a heart attack, it would have happened at that moment. "But this wasn't my choice. I just showed up and no one was here. I had to write my own name down on the list!"

Her eyes closed. "Poor thing. It was an accident."

That was when I realized what had happened. The moment had occurred: the time in the distant future when those in heaven returned to be with the ones they had loved. I had missed it and Greta had chosen to stay in heaven.

Panic rose in my throat. "Am I stuck here?"

"I would think not," Greta's eyes became slits as she thought about my situation.

"So what do I do?" I began to wring my hands from anxiety.

"Well, you are here because your death was an accident which happened during the moment. Corporate," she rolled her eyes and gestured to our surroundings, "must not have seen it coming."

I wanted to collapse.

"But that also means you were not preregistered on the list."

I thought about all the life I was missing, and how unfair it was that I could be stuck in heaven with Greta forever.

She patted me on the back. "It might be as simple as erasing your name from the list. Perhaps the door would open back up for you."

The next instant, we were back at the podium, with the book and quill just as I had left them. I stared down at my name, the only one written in a different way. Looking at the quill, I had a problem. "How do I erase it?"

Greta chewed on her bottom lip in thought. "That might be tricky."

We both stood there for a while in silence, trying to figure out how to make me live again.

Finally, Greta took in a sharp breath. "We can't erase it."

My heart sank, because I had known that for sometime already.

In a swift motion, Greta plucked the quill from my fingers. "But I can make a small change, can't I?"

I could not tell exactly what she changed, but it seemed like she made one of the 3's an 8.

She set down the pen and smiled triumphantly. "It's working. Tell your mother I say hello from heaven."

"How do you know-" I was stopped short because of a searing pain through my skull.

Heaviness set down upon my body and a voice whispered something next to my ear. "Sweetie."

Darkness was everywhere and I felt afraid. "Greta?" I asked.

"Open your eyes honey, it's Mom."

My eyes snapped open and I realized I was in a hospital bed. "Where is Greta?"

My mother touched my hand softly. "She passed away a few days ago, baby. Do you remember?"

"Yes, but-"

My father walked into the room with tears in his eyes. "We knew you'd wake up. We didn't give up on you."

Confusion. "I was sleeping?"

My mother blinked away a few tears. "You were in a coma."

I shook my head, which hurt very much. "I was dead. I saw Greta."

My parents shared a worried look. My mother looked back down at me. "Sweetie, you couldn't have died. You were here the entire time."

"But I wasn't."

My father sat down next to me and took my other hand. "Well, you came back to us and you're not going anywhere," he smirked, "besides, I heard from a good source that your appointment up there has been changed."

"Yeah," I whispered back.