PROSE : "Heaven" By Ynden Lizardo

"Heaven"

By Ynden Lizardo

I finally read “The Fault in Our Stars” after hearing others teenage girls rave about how wonderful it was. I groaned internally when the first two pages revealed it was going to be a cancer story. Those don’t typically end well. After the love interest was introduced, I wanted to stop reading. I didn’t feel the need to get attached to the characters and put myself through emotional turmoil when somebody died. Months prior to reading it myself, I read a haiku on that summarized one’s feelings throughout the story:

“Aww, hey this is cute

No no no no no no no

Why why why why why”

     I found it to be pretty accurate. I never ended up ugly sobbing, but I have to admit that my vision was blurred when I was reading about their beautiful date in Amsterdam. I liked it, but not enough to rave along with everyone else. Sorry John Green, but I thought the heroine could have been characterized more. Some of the attributes of her personality were more underdeveloped than Bella from the Twilight Saga.

So somebody died (didn’t see that coming), and I thought about death for twenty minutes, to be exact. I also thought about my relationship with God, which has been very ambiguous lately. I identified myself as a Christian because I believed in God and I went to church every Sunday and I read the Bible every night, but it felt more like a side interest than a faith. Like how an otaku collects figurines of characters and goes to anime conventions and reads manga every day. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that “He sent his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” That was the basic fundamental of how to become a Christian. I couldn’t imagine God constructing a silvery ghost and then let it inhabit a human body for about seventy years before taking it back. I also couldn’t believe that all of the “good” people who ever died dwelled in a “Heaven” above the clouds, singing and dancing gleefully in cotton-y soft white tunics. I’m rational, and I have no imagination. That image was painted by my Sunday school teacher when I was five.

I thought about the reason I became a born-again Christian in the first place. I was never really religious until my model-citizen best friend passed away. I felt obligated to become the person she never got the chance to be, so I tried my best to become a better person: I had better grades, I reconnected with the Lord, and I had more friends. I figured it was easier to read the Bible than to make enough money to buy weed from the guy who lived at the back of my neighborhood.

The fact that she was no longer living was hard for me to swallow. When my father told me the news at one in the morning, the first thing I did was watch a video of us saved on my phone. Then I called her number; it sent me straight to Voicemail of course. I cried. I screamed into my pillow so I wouldn’t wake up my brother who was sleeping in the next room. My sobs were harsh yet inaudible, and my grief had physically manifested itself into an uncontrollable tremor in my arms and upper body. I called my mom, who was working the night shift as a nurse. I tried to tell her that I was shaking, but my teeth rattled and I stammered so badly that she couldn’t understand what I was saying. She burst into tears on the other side of the line, and told me that she would be home in the morning. 

I spent the entire night trying to find out what I could about the bus accident she and her family perished in. I learned that forty-one people did not survive, but no one was identified yet. I went to sleep in a state of denial. When I woke up the next morning, a mutual friend of ours sent me an article about the accident I had not read before. It was all information that I already knew, but one thing stuck out: embedded within the text was a picture of paramedics surrounding the body of a boy who they were trying to revive. Under the oxygen mask they placed on his face while he was unconscious, I could still make out the inarguable face of my best friend’s younger brother. 

I ran out of my room screaming. After I had calmed down I had to convince my parents I was emotionally stable enough to attend the memorial service later on that night. At the memorial service, a lot of people came up to me with pity in their eyes, sympathetically putting their hand on my shoulder, saying soft words of condolences. Why did they have to keep touching me? Hugging me was not going to bring anyone back.

The memorial was held in their home, which was occupied by their grandfather while they were on vacation in the Philippines. The first thing I did when I got to their home was walk to my best friend’s room. The first thing I did when I got to my best’s friend’s room was kneel on the floor and cry facing the ceiling. We shared that room for months when my parents’ situation wasn’t the best. We used to sit on the floor and watch episodes of Asian dramas until the early hours of the morning. We used to yell at each other when we ate food that didn’t ‘belong’ to us, and then make up in that very room right before we went to bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about how we wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.

Before the rest of the guests arrived, I went to the bathroom to try to fix the mess I called my face. I stared at my puffy eyes and blotchy cheeks in the mirror. I sighed and sat on the toilet for half an hour, trying to get my thoughts together and wasting time thinking about my own misery. 

Their funeral was held thousands of miles away, but a relative sent us pictures of the event, including some with pictures of them in their caskets. I saw her younger brother. His clean suit mismatched the obvious repairs done to his face. I had to go outside after that, and I didn’t go back in until the service was almost finished. Two and a half years passed since that day, and I have not once seen a single picture of my dead best friend. 

The first person to say “They’re in a better place” to me almost got venom spit in their face. This place wasn’t that bad. Living wasn’t bad. I needed them here with me. There was no one I wanted to talk about the tragedy with more than the victims. God was a total douchebag for taking them away.

That made it easy for me to envision her singing and dancing in front of God while He sat His almighty ass on a throne somewhere in Heaven. I refused to believe her life was cut short when she was eleven, and that was all to her story. 

After reading “The Fault In Our Stars,” a Heaven where every one was happy all of the time became harder to envision. All I could focus on was the reality of the physical and emotional pain that could be felt. That’s when I came to a realization: Heaven was a metaphor. After my best friend died, her earthly body was placed in a casket and buried under ground. It should still be there. Her mortal soul was the only thing that went to Heaven back to God. Where does God reside? In our hearts. God lives in me, and so do the memories she left behind. Heaven is a metaphor for all of the good feelings I associate with her. Going to hell would be the same as being recognized as a bad or evil person, a legacy most people would not want to leave behind. As humanistic as my theory is, it’s one that I can finally be satisfied with. I still think about her every day, but I can finally accept that she is where nothing can hurt her anymore.

© 2013 | Ynden Lizardo