MY husband has major plans for his afterlife.
I'm not sure Stanley really believes there is one, but he's nothing if not a positive minded forward thinker.
He's the guy who'll look out over a long, grey, dismal vista, pinpoint the tiny spot, 100 kilometres away, where a wan bit of blue is barely evident, and predict - never mind that it's late November in soggy North Vancouver - that the rain is just about to beat a hasty retreat.
This is a lovable, if unscientific, personality trait. His prognostications may be fallible, but it's deeply endearing that they are always cheerful. He's sunny by nature.
Stanley's also a fellow who likes to focus on the big picture, and what's larger than the hereafter? He feels there are a few details that are worth nailing down right now. He has already chosen, for instance, what he'll wear when he makes his official exit. Every so often, as he pulls on a certain baggy, threadbare pair of corduroys of nondescript hue, he tells me, "I want to be buried in these." Then he wears them to power-wash the smoky grease off his countless barbecues.
Stanley either wants to leave the impression at his funeral that he lived the life of a hobo, or he pictures himself having to wear the same outfit for all eternity and is determined that it's going to be comfortable.
He's already got quite a packed agenda for Paradise. There's going to be a lot of eating - otherwise, it wouldn't be Paradise.
Stanley has numerous food intolerances, so his diet here on earth is meat-based. This suits him well - until he has to walk past a pizza outlet that gives off glorious gusts of browning crust and melting cheese. That's when he starts telling me what he's going to eat first when he finally honours his reservation at that great al forno pizza emporium in the sky.
He's got about 500 pizzas in mind. We haven't thoroughly discussed toppings, but I guess he'll sample them all eventually. My chocolate cake, currently verboten, will also be on the menu at his eternal home. I'm pretty sure his Aunt Ann's matchless pies and his dad's tender blintzes will be staples. I'm not certain whether Stanley will opt for vodka, his current tipple, or beer, which disagrees with him. Maybe he won't want any alcohol at all, though I find that hard to picture.
Stanley doesn't seem to have got much further in his post-existence planning than eating dairy and wearing corduroy, but it sounds as though savouring those pleasures will while away many millenia. If I know him, he'll also want to dance a lot, preferably with Madonna - that's the real Madonna, not Jesus's mum. I imagine he'd give the latter a wide berth, preferring the company of madcap artists. Jack Kerouac or the Three Stooges would likely fill the bill.
Of course, nirvana is the ultimate fantasy, because it's unknowable. Religious people have their own varied versions of what happens after death, depending on how literally they take their own faith's bible. Many look forward to their celestial ascension, since they see it as a reward for their good deeds in life. For certain believers, there may be wings and even halos. If we are to trust TV commercials, there will also be cream cheese and man-servants - in which case, I'm in!
I have one version in my head where heaven is Disneyland sans lineups - clean, well-managed, the Happiest Place Off Earth.
Ideally, it would be like the California Adventure ride, the one where you feel as though you're hang-gliding over Big Sur and swooping down over orange groves that give off a friendly citrus mist.
A heaven where we could invisibly soar above the TajMahal at sunrise and skim the waves over the Great Barrier Reef, peering into its teeming depths, would be lovely.
But maybe heaven consists simply of the peace that comes from nothingness.
Having watched beloved family members struggle with illness toward the end of their lives, my guess is that for many people who are dying, nothingness is a desirable objective, failing any better options.
The topic is vast, alarming and sombre in the extreme, as everybody knows. So it's nice to see Stanley taking such a chipper approach to his own demise, at least in the abstract.
I prefer to avert my eyes. Never accused of being Little Miss Sunshine, I'm going to have to side with filmmaker Woody Allen, who has been famously obsessed with the topic of dying for many decades.
"My relationship with death remains the same," Allen remarked last year at a news conference in Cannes. "I'm strongly against it."
kate@katezimmerman.ca
