The Vestibule of Heaven

In the Vestibule

I knew her, of course, the first time she came to the house. One of the advantages of being dead is the ability to see beneath the surface.

When I willed the house to Kelly, I hadn’t ever seen her, not in all the thirty years since she first slipped into the world. All I had was her first name and one faded little Polaroid picture of her at about a year old. I knew she had June Rose’s red hair and Victor’s green eyes; beyond that she just looked like a baby.

I gave the lawyers a copy of that picture, though I didn’t have much hope they’d be able to find her. But I wasn’t counting on the angels. I think they helped. At any rate, eventually—I don’t keep track of time anymore; could have been a week, could have been years—the lawyers found her, and she came. My granddaughter came to me at last.

When I made that will, I only thought of her—that I could maybe give her something to make up for everything she’d lost, a piece of the family she’d never had. I never expected to know how it would all work out. But things are different on the other side from what I’d thought, and it looks like leaving her the house was a pretty important thing for me as well.

It turns out there is no purgatory. I always knew the Catholics were wrong about that, though Victor was convinced it was real. He was sure he’d be stuck there for eons for marrying outside the church. When they let me go to be with him, I’ll rib him about that. “Now Esther,” he’ll say, and I’ll smile.

But it’s not like what we Lutherans thought, either. We don’t sleep until Judgment Day, and we don’t sit around on clouds in white robes, strumming harps. And it surely to goodness isn’t that kind of do-it-yourself heaven so many people seem to be expecting. It is what it is, and you get there or you don’t. I made it by the skin of my teeth, in spite of what I’d done, because I’d suffered and shed so many tears, and because Victor and June were praying for me—so the angels said. But I only got as far as what you might call the vestibule of heaven.

Even the vestibule is so much better than anything on Earth, there just aren’t any words for it. The light here is only the reflection, the leftovers of the light of Paradise, but even so, you can drink it and bathe in it and wrap it around you like a cloak, and know you’ll never need any other sustenance for all eternity. Just being free of the body is like being let out of prison: no more midnight cravings, no more achy joints, no more wondering whether you’ll make it to the bathroom this time. No more reading glasses—you see so much better without your eyes. I can see everything at once now, like I’m looking from all angles, up down and sideways, at the same time. And no more brain playing tricks on me. I think that’s the best part. I can remember all the good and forget all the bad. I can understand the reasons, too, for everything, and what we understand, we can always forgive.

I might have been content to stay in the vestibule indefinitely, but for one thing: it’s lonely here. I miss Victor and June, and I know there are so many others—parents and grandparents, cousins and friends—waiting to greet me as well. Even the saints I came to love through Victor’s influence, though I was a good Protestant to the end.

But they’re all inside, and so, of course, is the Presence. He’s way inside, up in the highest heaven of all. I imagine I’ll have to be inside for quite a while before I can bear that much light. But something in me won’t be satisfied until I see His face.

Archangel Raphael told me, when he brought me here and promised to help me, there’s only one way for me to get past the Vestibule: Kelly has to pray for me. But for that to happen, she has to know who I am and what I’ve done, she has to forgive me for it, and she has to come to a place where she even knows what it is to pray. It’s only God, of course, who can really bring that about; but the task He has set me is to help in whatever way I can.

So without exactly leaving heaven, I have permission for this while to hang around this house that once was mine, to watch Kelly and try to influence her in some way for good. But I’m not allowed to reveal myself to her, not yet, because it would frighten her too much. She’s got one of those rational minds, I can tell, wants everything cut-and-dried and explainable. I’ll have to soften her up to the other side of things, let the house introduce me to her, let her come to understand the whole story. Then, when she knows me a little and she’s ready to forgive, maybe I’ll be allowed to show myself and ask for her prayers. Or maybe I won’t need to ask.

In the meantime, I can watch her, and that in itself is blessedness.