Tag Archive | mom

The Comfort of Childish Things

Jun19

Tomorrow is the birthday of someone who is very special to me.  He’s my oldest friend.  He knew me from the day that I was born.  He watched over me through my earliest years, was my shoulder to cry on all through my less than perfect childhood.  He moved with me several times, even lived in the dorm with me in college.  He has been the truest friend that a girl could ask for.

I’m talking, of course, about Bear Bear.

Bear Bear was a gift to my mom at my baby shower.  He was hand-made by a wonderful woman who was a friend of our family.  She made bears for so many children who were in her family or connected to her family.  Each one was unique.

Bear Bear is a polar bear.  I have it on good authority that he was fluffy and white at some point before I loved the fuzz out of him.  He came with a pair of blue farmer overalls, seeing as I am a Farmer and all.  That’s how I first knew he was a boy.  He used to have soft moleskin ears and feet, but I wore through that fabric a long, long time ago.

I used to feed Bear Bear Cheerios by stuffing them behind the black leather patch that is his nose.  I seem to remember that it bothered me that he didn’t really have a mouth.  I took good care of him though.  Bear Bear had his stuffing taken out and was thrown into the washing machine twice when I had lice in elementary school and once when I was older, although I can’t remember why I washed him that time.  He’s on his fourth batch of stuffing.

When I felt like I was too old to be sleeping with a teddy bear, I converted Bear Bear into a pillow.  I could get away with having him in my bed for at least another ten years using that strategy.  But then the fabric he was made of started wearing very, very thin.  I knew the time had come for him to be just a decoration on my bed.  And there he sits to this day, when I am almost 38.

There’s something about our favorite toy or stuffed animal from childhood that stays with us forever.  Those things are called “security” blankets and the like.  It’s such a wonderful thing to thin of an item of such innocence filling us with security.  They’re like a piece of our parents, our parents before we realized they were human beings with flaws, that we could hold onto when we were scared.  It’s amazing to think that such a simple object could work so powerfully on our piece of mind.

My brother Stewart had a blanket.  It was a Winnie-the-Pooh printed blanket that he called “Goggie”.

For the record, that is smaller than a dish towel

Stewart used to chew on Goggie.  He must have started chewing when he was teething.  Goggie originally had a satin border and was the size of a standard baby blanket.  That’s before the chewing started.

Over time Goggie shrank.  First the satin band came off.  Then the remaining edges grew ragged.  My mom cut off the ragged bits, but Stewart kept on loving and chewing.  Goggie went through several trimmings and grew more and more threadbare.  After a while you could barely see the Winnie-the-Pooh designs anymore.  But Mom would still find him tucked under Stewart’s pillow when she went to change the sheets on his bed.

Then came the day, I think Stewart was in high school, when Mom and I found Goggie in the trash.  Well let me tell you, we weren’t having any of that!  I fished Goggie out of the trash and handed him to Mom, who said, “I guess it’s not cool to have a Goggie anymore.”

I wonder if in Stewart’s mind the day he threw away Goggie was the day he became a man.  That must be the fundamental difference between men and women.  It would have broken my heart to get rid of Bear Bear, even into my 30s.  To this day if there was ever a fire in my apartment I would grab Bear Bear and the thumb drives that have everything I’ve ever written on them first.  Stewart willingly got rid of Goggie.  Maybe it was his declaration of independence.  Maybe by casting aside the innocent comforts of his past he was preparing to take life by the horns.

Psht!  Men!

I am a firm believer that we should all keep pieces of our innocence with us well into adulthood.  We might grow up, but we never outgrow the need to feel sheltered and protected.  In fact, the more adult I come the more I long to have someone as omnipotent as my mom was when I was a little girl to hold me and tell me everything would be alright.  Knowing that sometimes things are not alright is all the more reason to chew on your security blanket at night.

I still give Bear Bear a hug now and then when I really need it.  He understands.  He’s been my best friend since before I was born.  And Bear Bear is not alone.  I still have Goggie too.  It’ll make a great wedding present for his wife.

So how about you?  Did you have a cherished blanket or toy?  Do you still have it?

The Best Pick-Up Line Ever

Jun15

I love stories of how people met.  There’s always something interesting in the chain of events that bring people together.  You never know how it’s going to turn out, but you can’t beat the story of how it all started.  They named an entire tv show after it: How I Met Your Mother.

Ironically enough, my favorite story of how two people met is the story of how my parents met.

It was Atlanta in the very early 1970s (probably ’71 or ’72?).  My mom was just about 30 and excited to be living in a big city.  She worked as a secretary at Rohm and Haas Chemical Company.  Mom always was very shy and sweet.  She was just so good in every sense of the word.  She was not the kind of girl who would approach a stranger or speak out.  She didn’t like to draw attention to herself.  I’m not like that.  I’m much more like my dad.

Dad worked for Champion Paper, in the same building as Mom.  He was just coming off of an unfortunate divorce.  His two sons, my half brothers, were living up in Ohio with my dad’s family after the stuff that went down with Dad’s first wife.  But Dad was always super charming and personable.  He was the kind of guy who would go out of his way for someone.  He did and still does like being the center of attention.  And he has no problem saying surprising things to strangers.

There was a small diner across the street from the building where my parents both worked.  As Dad tells the story, it was usually so crowded at lunch that you were lucky if you got a seat.  He had noticed Mom there before, noticed her in the building where they worked, and had wanted to meet her for a while.  But Mom was shy and she didn’t give him much of an opening.

One day at the busy, crowded diner it just so happened that Mom was sitting at the counter and there was an open seat next to her.  So of course Dad grabbed that seat.  He probably said a friendly hello to her, and she probably smiled shyly back.  And then disaster struck.

Mom was eating tomato soup.  For whatever reason, she dropped her spoon right on the front edge of the bowl.  In her attempt to pick it up she hit the lip of the bowl.  The entire thing went spilling all down her front.  Tomato soup everywhere!  Dad rushed to help her clean it up, as any gentleman would do.  He says that Mom was absolutely mortified.

So what did Dad do?  He smiled and said to Mom, “Looks like someone needs to take you out and teach you how to eat.  How ‘bout me?  How ‘bout Friday night?”

And Mom said … no.

Yep, she turned down a line like that.  But that didn’t stop my dad.  The ice was broken and he had his foot in the door.  He continued to talk to her in the halls at work whenever he saw her and sit near her at lunch whenever he could.  He kept asking and asking … until she eventually said yes.  They had their first date at a revolving restaurant in downtown Atlanta.  I was once driving through the city with my dad and he pointed it out to me.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there.  Dad being Dad, there was one minor detail that he forgot to tell Mom as they began dating.  In fact they were incredibly serious before he mentioned a thing about it.  But he knew he would have to say something, because they were talking about marriage.

As Dad explains, they were at the swimming pool in the apartment complex where one of them lived.  Dad finally fessed up and said, “Susie, I have something I need to tell you and it’s serious.”

To which Mom quickly replied, “There’s something I need to tell you too.”

Dad blinked and said, “Well okay.  You go first.”

Mom blurted, “I’m older than you.”

Grinning over the fact that she would think age was a big deal, Dad said, “I have two sons from a previous marriage.”

He says that Mom stared at him … then got up and walked away.  She walked around the corner and he thought that was it.  He thought he would never see her again.

But to his surprise, she came walking back towards the pool a few minutes later.  She said to him, “I always knew that I was  meant to be a mother, and if that happens sooner than I expected, then that’s okay with me.”

And that, my friends, is the kind of person my mom was.

Granted, the love story turned out to be more of a tragedy.  My dad cheated on Mom and left her for a younger woman.  Then he took his sons, the boys my mom had taken into her heart as her own from the moment she heard about them, back.  You never know how the story is going to end.  Mom died of cancer in 2001 and one of those sons, my brother Kelly, died last month of cancer at age 41.  As I sat by Kelly’s side in the hospital last month I imagined how happy they would both be to be reunited at last.  Maybe Mom can take Kelly out and teach him how to eat.

How I Became A Writer

Feb13

Here it is, folks!  In honor of ORIGINS Blogfest (a fabulous idea created by DL Hammons which hundreds of writer/bloggers are participating in today) I present you with my origins story – how I became a writer.  Or rather how I knew I was a writer.

I’ve included the one sentence version of the story in many a bio I’ve written:  I have been a writer since I was 10 years old and realized one day that I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Three year old Merry & her Granddad

I was in third grade.  It had been a rough couple of years for me.  My dad had walked out on us when I was 6, we moved halfway across the country to live near my Mom’s family, my Granddad (who had become a beloved father figure) had passed away very suddenly of a heart attack, and when my dad remarried he took my two older half-brothers (his sons from his first marriage) away to live with him.  Trauma!  I was struggling in school that year too.  It sounds so silly to an adult, but my best friend from second grade had been put in a different classroom than me.  I also had to learn long-division, which nearly killed me.  Everything pretty much sucked far more than your average ten-year-old deserves to have things suck.

My third grade teacher was Mr. Morley.  I adored him.  One day we were given a creative writing assignment.  I don’t even remember what we were supposed to write, but I ended up writing a story about a girl who made friends with and probably fell in love with a wasp (yes, a wasp) named Michael Greer.  Now Michael Greer was a boy in my class that I had been in love with since he kissed me in first grade.  This was the first instance of me making a character out of someone I knew.  I’m sure it was also the first time I used fiction to express and work through my emotions.  There was probably some deep psychological meaning to the fact that I would write a story about myself falling in love with a wasp (I was and still am to this day completely terrified of wasps) named after a boy I had a crush on.

Well, when we did these creative writing assignments in third grade we generally read them aloud to the class after they were graded.  I still remember Mr. Morley asking to speak with me at recess.  He was very tactful about saying that while he liked my story he didn’t think I should read it aloud.  I knew what he was talking about and agreed.  Thank you Mr. Morley for helping me to dodge a bullet that would have meant third grade social suicide!  I loved him even more.

Young Merry coming up with ideas to write about

But this first critique of something I had written got me to thinking….  I had written a story and enjoyed the process of writing it, and even though I had handed it in to the teacher it hadn’t been read aloud like the rest of the class’s stories.  So that meant that not everything I wrote would have to be on display for my class.  And if I could write something for a class that then wasn’t shared, who was to say that I couldn’t then just write something for myself alone to enjoy?

That’s when I started writing.  Granted, I didn’t do it a lot, just every now and then.  Until something else coincidental and wonderful happened when I was in fifth grade.  My Mom took a job as the secretary of the elementary school that I attended.  When she was cleaning out the office she found a bunch of old school supplies that no one wanted.  One of these items was a small spiral-bound three-subject notebook.  I asked if I could have it.  She said yes.  For the first time in my young life I had in my possession the tools to write as much as I wanted.  This was a notebook that wasn’t earmarked for schoolwork.  It was mine to do with as I pleased.  I believe I wrote another story in which a boy in my class who I had a crush on fell in love with me.  And I think there was some time-travel involved too.  Either way, the tide had turned.  I was a writer.

I have boxes and boxes of spiral-bound notebooks with stories I started, ideas I’ve had, and boys I’ve had crushes on.  I suppose I was always meant to be a romance novelist at that.  Those notebooks lasted up until I got my first computer.  I have a few ancient floppy disks with stories on them (that may never be able to be recovered).  Nowadays I have a flash drive with everything I’ve written for the last five or so years.  But really, it all goes back to those heavy, obnoxious boxes of spiral-bound notebooks that I’ve lugged from apartment to house to apartment to state to state for the last 25 years.  And yes, I still have the original notebook.

I was born to be a writer.  It’s as simple as that.  And I’ll be a writer until the day I die and then some.

[Medieval Monday will return next week as I begin an exciting new series on Awesome Medieval Technology!]

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month – A Trubute to My Mom

Oct28

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in honor of that I would like to tell you about my Mom, Susie Farmer, who died of breast cancer in 2001.

My Mom was born on September 23, 1942.  She was a war baby, the first child in her generation.  My Granddad was fighting in the Pacific, working as a SeaBee.  I’m not just saying this, but from the moment she was born, everyone in the family knew she was special.  She was the first one all of her servicemen uncles wanted to see when they came home on leave.  Even after the war, as more siblings and cousins were born, everyone agreed that there was just something special, angelic even, about my Mom.

She grew up in a typical 1950s environment.  She was known for her smile and her sweetness throughout childhood.  In high school she was the captain of the cheerleaders and had a lead role in the musical production of H.M.S. Pinafore.  Whenever I see her old classmates they tell me that they have such wonderful, fond memories of her.  She was popular amongst her peers and amongst her cousins.  Her cousins (people I think of “aunt” Nina and “aunt” Terry and the like even though technically they’re my first cousins once removed?) tell me they looked up to her and everyone wanted to be like her.  I particularly remember my Aunt Martha (Mom’s sister) telling stories about my Mom’s paper doll collection.  She was very precise about how she kept her paper dolls and cut their outfits out perfectly.  Martha says she was always reckless and would cut the tabs off of the dresses, but my Mom would come in and make new tabs for her and repair the broken ones.

Mom went to college at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.  She studied to be a secretary.  The big thing I remember her telling me about her college experience was that she was on the synchronized swimming team.  I always thought that was super cool.  I’m a little fuzzy about what she did straight out of college, but eventually she ended up moving to Atlanta, where several of her cousins were, and getting a job at Rom & Haas Chemical Company.

She met my dad in Atlanta.  I have yet to decide if this was a good thing.  They worked in the same building.  Actually, the story of how they met is pretty awesome.  There was a small diner across the street from that building that was often very crowded.  As my dad tells the story, he had noticed my Mom before and was happy one busy, crowded day to get a seat next to her at the counter.  Mom was eating tomato soup and somehow dropped her spoon on the bowl, spilling it all down her front.  Dad turned to her and said, “Looks like someone needs to take you out and teach you how to eat.  How about me?  How about Friday night?”  And she said no.  But he kept asking her until she said yes.  Their first date was in a revolving restaurant in downtown Atlanta.

Mom was 30 at the time and apparently concerned that she was older than my dad.  As things got serious she decided she needed to share her “secret”.  They had a heart to heart … which actually started with Dad saying “Susie, there’s something I need to tell you.”  She apparently answered, “There’s something I need to tell you too.”  As Dad tells it he paused and said, “Okay, you go first.”  She got very nervous and said, “I’m older than you.”  Dad blinked, grinned, and revealed, “I have two small sons from a previous marriage.”  Yeah, he’d forgotten to mention that little detail.  Dad says she got up and walked away around a corner.  He thought he was never going to see her again.  But then she came back and told him, “I always knew I was born to be a mother, and if that happens sooner than I planned it to, then that’s okay with me.”

My Mom and dad were married the next Spring.  My two older half-brothers, K.C. and Kelly, were part of the wedding.  Their mom was, um, let’s just say “not in the picture”, so my Mom became their mom.  To this day they have a deep, lasting affection for her in their hearts and I think when they think the word “Mom” it’s my mom that they see.  I was born not that long after, in July of 1974.  My brother Stewart was born in August of 1977. Mom was very possible the best mother to small children in the history of the world.

After marrying my Mom my dad went back to college.  As I understand it, my Granddad (Mom’s dad) paid for it.  As my dad tells the story, he felt like Granddad was demanding too much of him and he didn’t want to be who my Granddad wanted him to be.  Also, he felt like he didn’t have the emotional connection with Mom that he wanted to.  Did that constitute an excuse for him to cheat on Mom?  I don’t think so.  But he did.  After he graduated from college and joined the Air Force we moved to Minot, ND … so that he could be closer to his girlfriend who was transferred there.  Yeah.  My earliest childhood memories are of flat prairie and tornados.

Mom didn’t know he was having an affair.  She didn’t suspect a thing when she took us, all four of us kids, on vacation to her home near Philadelphia.  My most vivid childhood memory is the phone call she had when my dad told her not to come home, he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce.  Complete chaos.  We never went home from that vacation.

My parents divorced in 1981.  In February of 1982 my Granddad died suddenly of a heart-attack.  In 1983 my dad remarried the woman he was having an affair with and asked for his children back.  Just K.C. and Kelly, not me and Stewart.  I honestly think that it broke Mom in a way she never recovered from.  So all of a sudden it was just me, Mom, and Stewart.

And actually, we had a wonderful time with each other.  We had no money and ended up moving in with my widowed Grandmother.  Mom got a job as the secretary of the elementary school that Stewart and I went to, so we had the same daily schedule, the same holiday schedule, and lots of time in the summer to hang out with each other.  She would play legos with us all the time.  We ate dinner at the table, talked to each other, and played 20 Questions.  We would rent a house in Cape May for a week in the summer and sit around reading books.  Mom loved Anne of Green Gables.

It was more difficult for Mom to identify with Stewart and I as we got older and were no longer children.  We also suffered some serious scars from the divorce (scars which each of us are still dealing with today).  I don’t think she quite knew what to do with adult children.  But just about the time she could have figured it out she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through, but Mom faced it with her usual dignified, quiet grace.  She fought it once, was horribly sick, lost all of her hair, and had to have the lymph nodes near her arm removed, so her left arm was always badly swollen.  She went into remission … for four and a half years.  When the cancer came back the second time it had metastasized.  There was nothing they could do.  We were told that was it just before Christmas 2000.  I have always hated Christmas ever since then.

Mom died on April 3, 2001.  I was in grad school for Theatre at the time, performing in the musical “Children of Eden”.  During rehearsals she kept telling me she wanted to try to see it.  She was always so proud of the things my brother and I did, theater, singing, sports, writing, and wanted to support us at them no matter what.  She passed away in the middle of the run.  I was with her.  We knew the end was near so I skipped classes for three days to sit in her room with her.  She died quietly while I was having a conversation with my aunt Martha and a friend of the family.  I think it was a relief for all of us that she could finally be at peace.  That night I was on stage singing and dancing.

Mom was a quilter.  She made the most beautiful quilts you could imagine.  She loved bright colors, teal, purple, lavender, and blue.  She was so precise in the way she sewed.  I remember her saying that she got so much satisfaction in making the points meet up perfectly in her quilt squares.  Her stitching was tiny and precise.  A lot of people swore her quilts were machine quilted, her craftsmanship was that good.  She worked on a quilt up until the last few days of her life.  And somehow she managed to finish it too.  It was a gift for my brother K.C.’s daughter, Natalie.  K.C. and his wife made a special visit weeks after Natalie was born to bring her to Mom.  The last picture ever taken of Mom is with her holding brand new Natalie.  My sister-in-law swears that Mom is Natalie’s guardian angel and that when she was very young Natalie would talk to “her friend Susie” when she was in a room playing by herself.

My Mom also loved opera.  I saved up one year to buy her a ticket to the Met for Christmas.  Possibly the best gift idea I ever had.  My strongest memories of her are of her listening to the opera on a Sunday afternoon while sewing, the sounds of the radio, her sewing machine, and the unique sounds of her scissors mingling.  I miss her so much, but her presence is still with me and always will be.  I don’t have a lot of pictures of her either.  She was very shy and hated having them taken.  But she was beautiful.  People say I look like her, and I do more and more as I get older.  That’s the greatest compliment of all.

Mom knew there was something wrong with her breast for a year and a half before she went to the doctor to have it checked out.  If she had gone much earlier, when she first noticed the problem, she might still be here today.  So please, if you notice anything at all out of the ordinary, have it checked out immediately.  Breast cancer is a long and painful way to go.  I wish Mom could have been spared, but if she couldn’t be, then I hope there are many others out there who can be.

Heaven and Its Wonders…

Oct7

I usually like to post something light and silly on Fridays (Fanciful Fridays anyone?) but today’s light-hearted post, in honor of Steve Jobs’ journey into What Comes Next is something I actually take very seriously.  What does come next?

I believe very strongly in life after death.  I was raised Swedenborgian,  but I love studying different religions.  I have delved into Catholicism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Islam, Neo-Paganism, and have dabbled in Baha’i, Buddhism, and even *gasp* traditional Christianity.  Everybody has a little bit of something I like (and a little bit I don’t like at all).  My beliefs about life after death are about 85% Swedenborgian and a mish-mash of the rest.

Here goes….

I believe that whatever you think is going to happen to you after you die is what’s going to happen to you….  At first.  The point of the afterlife is not to freak anyone out.  It’s to make a transition from this life to the next.  So if you think you’re going to end up sitting on a cloud with a halo, yep, there’s your cloud and halo.  If you think you’re going to sit in a waiting room until everyone is called for some Great Judgment, oh look, waiting room.  If you have no idea what will happen then you’ll probably wake up on the other side and things won’t look all that different from how they did when you left this world.

At first.

But once you get bored of sitting on your cloud or waiting, when you get confused and frustrated from wandering around clueless or being all non-corporeal, someone will come along and invite you to find out how things really are.  Then you’ll resume a kind of life that feels almost normal as you go through the process of figuring things out and deciding where you belong.

This first place that you end up in is called by different names in different religions, but in the church I was raised in it was called the World of Spirits.  Everyone goes to the World of Spirits first.  I guess you could compare it to Purgatory, but it’s nicer.  It’s like therapy with the best counselors in the Universe.  In the World of Spirits you meet the people you knew who left the Natural World before you.  And yes, there will be parties.  I mean, they’ve been waiting for you!  It’s like a great big birthday bash.  Happy times.

The good thing about the afterlife is that there is no “real” time or space, just the appearance of it.  So you can hang out for weeks and weeks with these loved ones who went before you but you’re not wasting time because time isn’t linear like it is here.  You can also travel as far and wide as you want simply by thinking about the place you want to be.  Then bam, you’re there.  This is true for all of the afterlife, by the way, not just the World of Spirits.  And because there is no time you can take as long as you want to sort through your life, revisit the people who were important to you, and figure out where you belong.

But where do you belong?

A lot of religions believe in a God who sends people to one place or another.  Not me.  Oh yes, I definitely believe in God, and He definitely wants everyone to be close to Him.  And where we end up is either closer to or further away from Him based on who we are and how we lived our lives.  Because in the afterlife we choose where we want to be and we end up spending eternity with like-minded people.  Well, you say, then of course everyone would choose Heaven, so what’s the point?

Nope, it doesn’t work like that.  When I say that we end up with like-minded people it means that by the choices we make in this life, the way we conduct ourselves, the morality we have or don’t have, the things we love or hate, and how we treat other people we form ourselves into who we really are.  There’s a reason the phrase “Writing is in my soul” or something along those lines exists.  Our lives determine who we are.  So, for example, if I lived my life in this world choosing to be a kind-hearted, understanding, compassionate person, then when I get to the afterlife I will spend all eternity living with other kind-hearted, understanding, compassionate people.  Some folks might call that Heaven.  On the other hand, if in this life I was petty, cruel, and loved gossip I would end up spending eternity with other people who are petty, cruel and who love gossip.  Sounds pretty Hellish, doesn’t it.  So be careful who you are in this life because you will end up spending eternity with people just like you.

However, when I say “just like you” I’m talking about your core.  I’m not saying, for example, that I will end up in a Heaven full of Writers.  (God no!)  Actually, quite the opposite.  Heaven (and Hell) is made up of a myriad of countries, cities, towns, kingdoms, villages, whatever.  Each one is full of a variety of people who interact perfectly together.  Everyone in any given Heavenly Society contributes something to the whole that no one else can and everyone’s contribution fits in perfectly and is appreciated by the other people in your society.  Imagine how awesome it would be to spend eternity with a bunch of people who you get along famously with, who you love, and who love you.

Speaking of love, I also believe in love that lasts forever.  The Swedenborgian church has its own term for it, Conjugial Love.  Conjugial is a Latin word that more or less means Married or Married Love.  What do these lovely made-up words mean?  They mean that if you haven’t already met them in this life, when you get to Heaven (if it’s what you want) you WILL meet your perfect soul-mate.  And you WILL live happily ever after with them for eternity.  Pretty sweet, eh?

One other thing I should add is that everyone in Heaven has a Use.  And by Use I mean everyone does something.  I’d call it a job, but “job” has such a bad connotation in this world.  Think of it this way.  Whatever it is that you love to do the most, you’ll get to do that.  And you won’t have to worry about money.  If your passion is gardening you’ll be free to spend as much of your time gardening as you want.  If you love numbers (and oddly enough, there are some people out there who really do) you’ll get to spend eternity crunching them.  I’m sure someone in Heaven needs an accountant.  If, like Steve Jobs, you love inventing awesome new things, yep, there will be awesome new things that need inventing.  In Heaven?  Really?  YES!  Because God works through people, not through magic.  Even in Heaven things just don’t poof into existence.  Granted, I have no idea how all that does work, but I’m sure there’s an app for that.

Okay, all of this theoretical stuff might be a lot to chew, so let me give an example.  And I apologize for being so long-winded today, but hopefully it’s worth it.

This is what I plan to do when I die:

First and foremost, I’m going to hang out with my Mom.  She died in 2001 and I miss her.  Who knows how long it will have been since I’ve seen her by the time I get there.  We’re going to have a lot of catching up to do.  And my Granddad, who died in 1982.  I was only 8, but we were close.  And my friend Erin who died just after her senior year of high school.  Lots of parties.  And once I’ve done all that and gone through whatever preparation and sorting process I need to go through I, Merry Farmer, am going to enroll in the University of Heaven (or Heaven U, whichever gives me the best scholarship).  I am going to study the History of Heaven as it has Related to Earth from the Dawn of Time to the Present.  I’m sure this will take me a while.  But it’s Heaven!  I’ve got all the time I want.  This course of study will involve a lot of field-trips to societies of people who died during different times in the history of Earth.  And because those people will be living in places that are most comfortable for them, i.e. places that came into existence in the time in which they were alive on Earth, it will feel like traveling through time.  Yes, time travel is possible.  Sort of.

My Heaven will look like a Maxfield Parrish painting

Okay, still with me?

While engaging in this course of study I’m sure I will write a lot of novels.  Because of course there are novels in Heaven.  Of course there are universities in Heaven.  I mean, some people’s deepest love is to teach, so they get to teach.  Some people, like me, LOVE being a student, so they will get to be a student (to eternity … with no tuition … and no grades!)  Some people love to read, so there will be books.  And if no one writes in Heaven, then I’m not going.  I think you get the picture.

And of course, if I haven’t already met him in this life, I will meet the Love of My Life.  Gosh, I hope he looks like Richard Armitage!  By the way, sex in Heaven?  Hell yes!  The best ever!

I also think that Reincarnation fits in here somewhere, but I’ve gone on WAY too long, so I’ll save that for another post.

I’m sure I’ll do a lot of other things too, but I don’t want to load up my plate too much until I see the rest of what’s at the banquet.  Because as my Mom said when she appeared to her sister, my aunt Martha, in a dream about two weeks after she died, “Heaven isn’t anything like any of us think it is, it’s better.”

Awesome.

Granted, I’m not exactly in a hurry to get there, but I’m also not remotely afraid of death.  Dying, yes.  Death, not a bit.  Call me crazy (and plenty of people do) but I can’t wait!

Someday, maybe next Friday, I’ll come back and describe to you what my Hell would look like.  Hint: Eternal late February with a car that doesn’t work.

P.S.  This post is intended to entertain, not proselytize.  So if I’ve offended you *cringes* Sorry!

(But if you’re really curious about the beliefs I was raised with that formed the basis of what I developed as my own personal belief system feel free to look here: http://www.newchurch.org/beliefs/life-after-death )