Heaven

For starters, the standard works everyone gets: three trumpets blown in unison; your name acclaimed to the galactic hegemony of stars; plus assorted angels with ceramically smooth hands (the nail-work!) casting wholesale quantities of petals (flowers of the deceased’s choice) at your size eight feet.

Then the bespoke part: (you thought it would be the same for everyone?) – beginning, in your case, with David Bowie, a cappella, performing a song penned especially for you, at least the equal (let’s not get too carried away here) of Life on Mars.

And as you listen, because in Heaven they’ve figured out that perpetual spontaneous wonder is hard to beat, something completely unexpected happens – you’re abruptly surrounded by all the things you most loved. Especially the dogs you most loved, especially old Sam. And as you whirl around, fervently grasping his red collar, so he can’t ever run off again, all those needles and hospital rooms clear away forever, except for the nurses and doctors you liked (including the still-living ones. This is Heaven, you don’t have to wait for them to die). They’re all waiting, clad in tender smiles, the young Leo DiCaprio standing under a chandeliered staircase (you liked that scene, didn’t you?), a staircase brocaded in shamrocks and Paddy bunting, toasting you with Guinness (you never liked champagne), lifting frothy stout dark kegs as one in your honour.

After which – because in Heaven everything gets topped continuously (it’s God’s biggest headache) – who appears but – feck! – your favourite comedian Stewart Lee, ending his routine with a punchline about, I don’t know, a winking leprechaun sipping Poitín – after which – double feck! – who else should turn up but your great friend Tara – the girl I never knew; the girl who died aged 21 in the same car crash  you narrowly survived; the person you loved perhaps most of all, more even than me. In she sashays, more alive than anyone living, red split-thigh dress, blonde hair swishing, backlit by Kerry countryside. Grasping your cherished hands, she offers a simple Irish blessing –“Maith thú” – and takes you up – (of course up!) – far up and away up, up into the light, which of course is incandescent, scented with your treasured lavender, and charged with such an ultimate brightness that it should be impossible to bear. Except that here, in Heaven, your eyes have been cunningly re-designed to take it, the industrial-strength shutters and dimming lenses manufactured locally could handle a ground zero nuclear blast, they simply need to be that efficient.

And, frankly, given your habitual modesty – phew! Wow, fellas! –  yes, you’re a bit flustered by all the attention.  But you shouldn’t be. Honestly, you should have expected it. Because while I no longer remember everything about you, I do recall a lot of the things you loved. So even now, twelve years after you died, I’m confident I could create a passable Heaven for you.

But do I need to? You went wide-eyed, with no expectations, into that dark night. Besides, if Heaven exists, it’s not like anything we can imagine; of that we were both certain.  Heaven, as conceivable by us, is not for the living.  Heaven is for me (and no longer you).

So this is my afterlife for you, beloved wife. And it has one incontestable guiding principle: by day, fine, you can lie in the rainy clover of Ireland, you can have Stu, David Bowie, DiCaprio, the Full Elect of Heaven and any other company you choose. At night, though, seriously – no-one but me.

Cliff McNish’s middle-grade fantasy novel The Doomspell was translated into 26 languages. His adult stories have appeared in Nightjar Press, Dublin Creative Writers, Stand and Confingo.

Twitter: @cliffmcnish