legalpad819

Robert Impala woke up on a Wednesday, at least he thought he woke up, to quite a stir. There was a man standing next to his bed with giant white fluffy wings.

"Hello Robert," he said cheerily. "I'm Gordon, your guide into the afterlife. That's right, you're dead."

Robert stared in disbelief. "I feel very much alive," he answered.

"Yes, yes," Gordon consoled, "and I'm sure you want to know how you died and what's going on down there." Gordon motioned towards the floor, as though earth was located somewhere below the wooden floorboards. "We have to keep things moving though, lots to do. Do me a favor now- close your eyes and think carefully about what you want to wear today, and DO NOT tell me your birthday suit. I know better than to even present that one as an option and you'd be surprised at how many people want to pick it, so putting birthday suit OUT of your head, pick something to wear and... open your eyes."

Robert, still in disbelief, imagined his favorite polo shirt and some slacks, nothing too exciting, and when he opened his eyes, sure enough he was wearing those very clothes.

"Alright then," Gordon motioned Robert towards the door. "We are onto bigger things!"

Robert was ushered into a long hallway filled with other people, but obediently followed Gordon for what seemed like miles past door after door until they approached a large metal one. Gordon opened the metal door with a key card and tucked his wings so that it could fit through the frame. The room they walked into was much like a movie theater, with a single row of seats and a large screen on the opposite wall.

Gordon sighed. "OK, so about twenty years ago, your ex-wife signed you up for some afterlife examination. We are doing a study to see what makes people happy over the course of their lives. We're going to sit here and watch back your life, and I want you to press this button each time it makes you happy." Gordon pointed to a large red button on the lounge style chair.

"My ex-wife could sign ME up for some study after my death?" Robert asked.

"Well yes," Gordon answered. "She was rewarded with a gift card to Linens and Things at the mall. She was quite pleased with it." Robert nodded in recognition of Stacy's love for Linens and Things.

"How long is this going to take," Robert asked.

"Now that depends," Gordon tilted his head in thought. "If you had a happy life, you're going to spend a lot of time pressing that red button, but if not, you may want to fast forward through a lot of it." Gordon pointed to a second button that looked like a little arrow pointing to the right. Robert thought about how technology in the afterlife was a little behind the times.

"And what happens after this?"

Gordon pulled out a notepad from his packet. "Good news on that front, your next stop is heaven!"

"Well then I can give that ex-wife of mine a piece of my mind for the rest of eternity."

Gordon looked back at his notebook and slowly shook his head. "Probably not."

Robert hopped into the theater seat and looked back at Gordon. "Let's get started, there are so many people I know are going to be waiting for me in heaven."

Gordon issued one quick warning. "Robert, you will only get to view this movie once, so don't rush it too much. I'll be popping in and out of the room, and if you get tired, we can take a break and come back to this tomorrow."

The video started with a hospital scene. Robert's mother was holding him tightly, and he was wrapped in white blankets with a blue and pink beanie popped on his head. Robert immediately hit the red button and tears started to well in his eyes. It had been so long since he'd seen his mother, and she was so lovely. Robert's dad was there too, and he looked so young and full of energy. Robert held down that red button and couldn't let go. He also didn't find himself getting tired at all. Watching his life was riveting. It was filled with people he hadn't see in so long and people he had forgotten ever existed. He finally got tired around the time he reached age three, so Gordon walked him back to his room, where he slept peacefully, thinking about all that he'd seen.

Gordon left Robert at his room and went to check in at headquarters. He explained that Robert found everything made him happy. He'd held down that button for days straight. Seeing his loved ones made him happy, which was normal, but also funny things. The rotary phone made him happy, his mom's face powder with the giant puff applicator, the wooden high chair that his grandfather built from scratch. So many things made Robert happy. The administrators reassured Gordon that this wouldn't last. Robert was bound to start fast forwarding soon and they could narrow down which things really mattered.

In the next session, Robert asked for some popcorn, having realized that he hadn't eaten anything in the afterlife. Gordon obliged, even though nutrition was no longer necessary in their realm. Gordon ate a few kernels himself, surprised at how satisfying the buttery treat was. Gordon was expecting that once the films turned to Robert's school days, he would find less happiness. Except Robert kept finding things that made him happy.

"Look at those pens! You could press down the color you wanted to write with- red, blue, black, or green. Those were the best pens." Robert watched the entirety of himself reading Treasure Island. He loved that book. He loved every sunset and sunrise. He loved the way the clouds looked whether they were white and fluffy or dark and backlit by the sun. There was one afternoon where he spent three hours looking through the backyard for a four leafed clover, but didn't find any. He held down that red button the entire time.

Robert's grandfather died, and Gordon knew that things were going to shift, but sure enough Robert sat there with his had on that button. "Look how everyone came together to celebrate his life," he said. Robert was crying and he was still finding happiness.

At the end of day two, Gordon was losing his patience. He paused the film. "Robert, I think we're losing the thread here. You've been holding down that button for weeks straight. Are you trying to say that your whole life was happy? Every single moment?"

Robert paused to think about the question. "You know, I wasn't happy every day of my life, but I also think I was missing a lot as I went through it. Watching it all back, it's all making me happy. It's beautiful. My whole life was beautiful. Well maybe not my ex-wife, but we haven't gotten there yet."

Gordon wasn't used to this type of review session. Most people wanted to fast forward through as much of it as possible so they could get onto whatever came next. So Gordon resigned himself to getting through the rest of his session without getting ANY real feel for what made Robert happy. It was just "yes yes yes" over and over.

Months went by as Robert continued to page through his life. "Is there any way we can go backwards? There are parts I'd like to see again." Of course this was against the current rules, but Gordon decided that maybe there was something he could do. That night, he went back to the administration offices and plopped down into a beanbag chair.

"You're not going to believe this," he told management. "We're watching the end part of Robert's life. He's still happy about naps, and visits from his kids, and how apple pie tasted when he was hungry enough to eat. I've been at this forever and I'm realizing that our system is broken. We can only measure WHEN someone is happy and not WHAT is making them happy. This would be much better if we had the subjects be able to pause the videos and write down all the things that make them happy." The management nodded. Gordon called tech support.

The next morning, Robert showed up, thinking this would be his final session, but what he found was a new chair with all kinds of extra buttons. There was a a pause and a rewind, a slow motion, and a button that simply said "smell."

"What's going on," Robert asked.

"You're not going to believe this," Gordon answered, "we're going to have to start this whole thing all over again."

Robert smiled. "I've got all the time in the world Gordon."

Gordon grabbed some popcorn.

Bobby Sanders was never going to be much of an outfielder. His dad tried, he really did. They played ball in the backyard or went to the field after work. Mr. Sanders signed him up for the local league every year. They went to baseball games together and ate hot dogs slathered in yellow mustard and followed every pitch, but Bobby just wasn't an athlete. He would stand out there in right field picking dandelions or worrying about how the American flag banners hung lopsided on the outfield fence. Mr. Sanders sat in the stands and prayed that if the ball popped into right field his son would, first, notice, and then actually catch the ball. As the season neared its end, no balls had been caught by Bobby.

This meant that Bobby was equally oblivious when a new member joined the Tigers, causing quite a stir among the boys. Suzanne had eight, yes eight, older brothers. It never occurred to her that a girl couldn't play baseball, and her brothers wouldn't let her join their games until she could run fast enough and throw hard enough to make it fair. She learned to throw the ball so fast, in fact, that her parents couldn't see a downside in letting her join the boys league, as she was definitely up to par. The coaches and team members were skeptical until they saw her throw the ball straight past their best hitter pitch after pitch.

Bobby didn't even notice Suzanne was there until the end of practice, when the whistles sounded, beckoning everyone to the dugout for dismissal. The whistle seemed to buzz Bobby right out of a trance where he was following some bumble bees as they flitted from flower to flower, but when he saw her.. well.

Suzanne stood next to the pitcher's mound, her orange hair pulled back into a pony tail that slipped right through the back of her baseball cap. Bobby thought she was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen. He pushed up his wire glasses and trotted towards the dugout. Bobby wasn't sure he could speak to Suzanne at all. He was so completely stunned, but he knew he had to find some way to impress her.

At the next practice, Bobby told his coach that he wanted to try his hand at the catcher position. Coach Smith was surprised at this development but figured he would give the kid a chance. Catching took some getting used to. The catcher had to wear a bunch of extra equipment and used a different kind of glove. For Bobby though, it meant that he got to spend his field time looking right at Suzanne and catching everything she threw. Mr. Sanders wasn't sure where all of Bobby's new found focus came from, but he was happy to see it. This meant that Bobby had a really good excuse to talk to Suzanne. He would shout encouraging words to her about the batters like "you can do it" or "big strike zone- this is easy!"

Suzanne liked having Bobby behind the plate. He seemed like a nice kid and never gave her a hard time about being a girl. So when baseball ended and school was about to start up again, the two of them decided to walk to school together. They would talk about the major league teams and their favorite players. Sometimes after school, they would stop at Suzanne's house to work on homework and eat Hot Pockets. Suzanne's brothers were always making Hot Pockets, much to the chagrin of Suzanne's mom who wished they would save their appetites for dinner.

When the kids started High School Suzanne started dating one of the varsity football players who played with her brothers. Bobby was pretty heartbroken over it, but realized that he'd never told her how he felt. He watched them go off to prom together while he stayed home and played Zelda by himself. Zelda was fun- who needed the prom?

Bobby and Suzanne worked on their college applications together. They both wanted to go to USC. Suzanne insisted that they drop off their applications together at the same time, so they took their packets to the nearest mailbox and sent off their letters with much fanfare. Of course neither of them had to worry too much about getting into college since they'd both been studying hard and staying out of trouble. They decided that they'd drive off to college together- as best friends should do, and loaded up Bobby hand-me-down station wagon until it was stuffed to the gills. Waving goodbye to their families they set out down the road, windows down, with the country air blowing in their faces.

"Are you finally going to get yourself a girlfriend in college," Suzanne asked.

"I don't know," Bobby replied.

"Oh you should! Any girl would be so lucky to have dependable Bobby."

"And how does your boyfriend feel about you going off to USC," Bobby replied, dodging the compliment.

"We broke up," she answered. "He was a fine guy, just not for me."

Bobby looked over at Suzanne, completely convinced she was now ten times more gorgeous than the first time he'd seen her, because he knew she was so sweet inside and out. He thought about the guts it took to stop playing in the outfield and switching to catcher. He thought about how he felt watching her date others during High School. He knew it was time to finally speak from his heart.

Finally, Bobby reached out his hand and entwined it in Suzanne's. "I think I know who's just for you."

Five years later, a wedding took place in the oddest location- the town baseball field. Bobby and Suzanne tied the knot exactly where their friendship started years earlier. Their families sat in the stands, so happy that Bobby and Suzanne finally had realized something that the rest of them knew for so long. These two belonged together!

Daisy only played the lottery when it reached a billion dollars. A billion dollars seemed like an obscene amount of money, even if the government was going to take half of it in taxes. She’d buy one ticket and tuck it under a music box on her nightstand before going to bed. Daisy never stayed up to hear the lotto numbers pulled. She’d just lay herself down and spend the money in her head.

“First, I pay off mama’s mortgage. That’s $300,000. Then I’ll pay my own, so another $250,000,” Daisy muttered in her half-asleep state. She always fretted about spending half a million so quickly, but that was always the plan. The mortgages had to be paid first so her mom could stop working, and then she could keep her own little home and buy a bigger one for herself. Usually, by the time she’d spent 2-3 million, Daisy was fast asleep.

So the next morning was like a reverse Groundhog’s Day for Daisy when she looked at her ticket expecting it to be a loser. It was not a loser. Daisy called in sick to work and ran into her daughter’s room. “No more working,” she cheered. “Get up and call in sick. We’re going to the lotto office.”

Daisy prided herself in being a woman of her word, and so once she had the lotto winnings, she got to work doing all of the things she’d promised to herself and others (mostly to herself). She paid off her mother’s mortgage and prepaid the real estate taxes for the next ten years. She paid off her own mortgage. She gave $50,000 to her sweet neighbor who’d lost his hand in a work accident. Daisy funded school programs and domestic violence shelters.

Then she directed herself to house shopping. As long as she’d put a large portion of her money to good deeds, she felt like it was fair to reward herself as well. Soon enough, she was situated in a large farmhouse with acres of her own land. Daisy decorated her house without any worry as to what was fashionable. She had a whole room for her stuffed animals and two giant dog beds for her puppies (large enough to probably swallow them whole). She declared that none of her walls would be white, so splashes of different colors could be found from room to room. It was a happy place, and when the day turned to night, Daisy sat on her porch with her mother and her daughter and sipped sweet tea while the crickets chirped around them.

Except.. ever since she moved into her new home, Daisy found it very hard to sleep. She was used to living in a busier place, to hearing trains rumble by through the night. At some point it occurred to her that if she wanted train noise, she could simply build her own train line, and so she did. She had a miniature train built to circumvent her property, and hired a whole team to run the trains. She built the train team a set of houses on the far end of the property, and so the train started to run, chugging along, tooting its horn, making Daisy quite pleased.

One day, she was visiting the train team housing and noticed that the engineer’s children looked bored and unoccupied. “Would you guys like a playground?” she asked. Of course the children loved this idea, so Daisy got to work building the most elaborate and adorable play area with slides and climbing apparatus that looked like castles and dragons. The children seemed much happier, and Daisy was quite pleased again.

Except once summer came around, it was too hot to be on the playground, so the children needed a pool and a splashpad, and the adults wanted a garden and a greenhouse. Daisy found herself building more structures and then more houses for the people she kept hiring. Her community grew and grew. Years later, there was a medical clinic and a veterinary practice, stores, a gas station, a library, parks and trails. Daisy had continued buying land in the local community and just expanding her empire, and while some of her buildings were altruistic, others earned her some more money so she could continue her manifest destiny.

It was a wonderful life, and Daisy shined at urban planning in a way she’d never imagined. So she was quite perturbed when a certain uninvited visitor knocked on the door. Nine feet tall and cloaked all in black, it was clearly Death standing in her doorway.

“Oh no,” she told him. “I don’t have time for this. Go darken someone else’s doorway.”

“Funny thing,” replied Death in his baritone timbre. “I rarely ever knock. I’m more of a stealth attack kind of entity, but you are so highly regarded that I wanted to make this as painless as possible.”

“You know me?” Daisy asked.

“Do I ever,” Death shifted his weight as he spoke. “We like to bet on the billion dollar winners up there. Me, St. Peter, Socrates, Pete Rose, and Liberace- we have a group going. Unfortunately, I bet that you were going to spend that money into the ground, and I lost a bundle! You’ve done incredibly well.”

“Well then you see, so many people need me, I can’t possibly go with you just yet.” Daisy almost pouted at Death, a look he’d rarely seen. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

Death was pretty shocked at the invitation, as he was used to getting doors slammed in his snout, which is why he’d stopped knocking on doors in the first place. Happily, he came inside of Daisy’s rainbow home and took a seat in the kitchen. There they had a long chat, a chat that lasted all night and into the morning. When they were done, Death stretched his arms high into the air, trying to eek out the kinks. He wasn’t used to being in the same spot for so long. “I’m going to let you stay,” he said, “but I’ll be back next month.”

And so this became a bit of a routine. Once every four or six weeks Death would show up and Daisy would invite him in for tea or sometimes a stiff drink, and they’d chat and laugh. Daisy was surprised that Death could be such good company, but month after month she found herself more tired, her joints stiffer, her bladder less cooperative. It was taking a toll that she’d stayed alive much longer than intended. Daisy saw Death take many of her friends and relatives, and she started to reconsider sticking on Earth.

One winter night, Death came by for his usual visit, surprised to find Daisy with her bags packed. “I guess it’s time,” she told him. “I finally think I’ve done enough. The city will go on without me.”

Death sighed. “I’m so glad you said that. We have a real problem up there with land management. I’m really hoping you can help.”

Daisy laughed. “I guess my work is never done!”

Have you ever found a gift for someone that you knew would make them gleeful, but may also make others around them ever so slightly annoyed? That was my intention when I bought my granddaughter a xylophone. It was a fisher-price multicolored toddler xylophone, complete with a small wooden mallet. I knew she would love it, but I also knew her parents might not love it. That xylophone was my first mistake.

As I puttered around the house, Laura kept banging that xylophone like she was destined for Carnegie Hall. There was no discernable tune, but she did not care. Unfortunately, my son was trying to make a phone call, and the xylophone orchestra was not making it easy to concentrate. I told Laura to stop playing for a bit, so she pouted and stomped off into the dining room.

And then it was quiet. Oh so gloriously quiet and warm, that I sunk into the couch and drifted off to sleep. That was my second mistake, as unbeknownst to me, Laura had climbed under the dining room table and also fallen victim to the sweet surrender of a mid-day nap. My job as a babysitter was an utter fail.

I did, however, fall into the most vivid dream where I was trying to swim at the beach. I am quiet good at a lot of things, but swimming has always eluded me. Anytime I find myself in water that's even moderately deep, I flail and sputter around, causing my body to sink. The sinking only causes more panic and more frenzied movements until I'm in a terrible cycle of.. not swimming. In this dream though, my father was there on the beach (even though he passed away years earlier).

"I know why you're bad at swimming," he called from the shore, as the waves lapped around my waist.

"I can't do it," I responded.

"You mean you won't do it," he retorted. "If you want to swim, you have to be vulnerable, and I don't mean vulnerable like you would be to another person. That's easy. A person is just another imperfect mortal. If you want to swim, you have to make yourself vulnerable to the whole ocean. You have to accept the idea that the ocean could swallow you whole. Once you do that, you'll float."

At this point, I believe I made a face at my father, much like Laura did when I told her to stop playing the xylophone. I pouted defiantly and then resolved myself to the fact that my ghost father was probably right.

My father trudged into the water, and hugged me, and it was like the greatest, warmest wave I'd ever felt. "Go on then, lay down," he directed. I threw myself backwards and let him cradle my shoulders in his giant hands. My toes wiggled above the water line.

"The ocean is huge," I said. "It goes on for thousands of miles and is trillions of gallons."

"And you are never alone," father said. "I am always right here."

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, my father was gone, but I was floating, with no worry about how deep the water may be below me. "You're always right.. here.."

At this point, I was jolted awake by my son. "Where? Where is Laura?" He seemed in sheer panic- much worse than even my fear of swimming. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on the baby and now I had no idea where she could be. We searched high and low and I was overcome with disappointment in myself. How could I even be so relaxed when I had a serious job to do?

Luckily, right before we were about to call in the authorities, Laura crawled out from under the dining room table, xylophone in hand.

"Here I am!" she called, unaware of the chaos that had plagued us for the last twenty minutes (which felt like twenty hours). From then on, I vowed, I would do a better job at babysitting, even if it meant drinking a large cup of coffee in the afternoon. I also started planning a trip to the shore to test out being vulnerable with the ocean.

My father died eighteen months ago, and it's an odd sensation when someone estranged passes away. We didn't speak for about three years before he died. I blocked his number sometime during Covid because I'd finally learned that you can love someone but also have that person be so toxic to your existence that it outweighs your love entirely.

The truth about my father is complicated. He was a liar, a cheat, a criminal and a registered sex offender. He had terrible habits and a superiority complex unlike any other. There were times he declared himself a god, and I couldn't tell you if that was truly in jest or if he believed it to some extent. Anywhere I find myself lacking, I see himself shining through.

My father ruined us all both financially and in the eyes of the community. Even after he died, we were picking up the pieces of the debts he left behind. Each one of these a deception he left in his wake. He used to brag about his successes (all within his own mind), and tell his children that it was too bad his generation would be the last to exceed the success of their parents. In his mind, we were doomed to fail by virtue of the fact that no one could measure up to him.

My father spent most of his adult life significantly overweight- stuffing himself with fast food, sugary drinks, and finding vegetables beneath him. I remember being a child and begging him to change his diet- crying at how we didn't want to live without him. How naive I was, that sad child putting her heart into a man who did not deserve a morsel of it.

When my father went to jail, we were asked not to visit him. My mother only went once and he told her not to return because the strip searches to meet with visitors were humiliating. He complained about the food and the population he was being subjected to, but he did make one friend. I suppose sex offenders have to stick together. My brother and I though we would be done with him forever once he was locked away, but my mother eventually let him move back home. It seemed our prison would endure.

Years later, I was practicing at my own law firm and my father introduced me to a client who needed some assistance with his brother's estate. I spent many days at this elderly man's home- he and I sitting at the kitchen table and sorting through bank statements while he ate bologna sandwiches. It wasn't until much later that I learned this was my father's friend from prison- that he sent me (a young lady) to this man's home by myself without any warning. That the house had firearms hidden all over it, including wedged between the couch cushions oriented behind my seat at the kitchen table.

You see he never worried about our well being the way we worried about his. My father had no idea how to love or care for anyone.

Usually, when a loved one dies, you go through the seven stages of grief. My grief for this death is skewed. Some of my siblings smiled when they heard he was gone. I couldn't blame them. There's no right emotion for this situation. What I felt was a delayed relief- like a long acting pill. It was a relief that only started in a trickle. Each day, I tell myself "he can't hurt you anymore." Each day, I believe it a little more. It's been eighteen months and in some ways, I feel like I'm still learning to breathe.

It may have been easier if I didn't see his face when I looked in the mirror, if there wasn't a glimpse of him in my children's contours. It may have been easier if I fully outright hated him.

Today, I'm trying to find the consolation in having him as my father, because I have learned quite a lot, albeit at my own expense. Monsters look like regular people. They can be quite charming. The greatest liars can be very difficult to figure out. Bad guys aren't bad all of the time. My father taught me to love live music and how to catch a softball. He was also a terrible person and a terrible parent. He taught me more of what not to do than of what to do.

And now it's my turn to figure out how to live the rest of my life without being under his shadow. I can and will be happier, healthier and kinder. I daresay, against all of his advice, I will be better off than he was in every way that matters.

It's been a few years, but I feel like it's time to jump back in. I'm really excited to see what my LJI friends have been up to, and.. compete to the death, or whatever the ultimate prize is.