WHO OWNS HEAVEN?

Recently I was visiting a longtime reader of this journal who runs a funeral home in Missouri, started by his grandfather in 1917. The home is something of a tradition in this small town. As we discussed changes that funerals have taken over the past two generations I told my friend of a lady I once met in a back room of a funeral home in California. I came upon her quite by accident since I was casually walking about the place while my host, the funeral director, was busy on the phone.

A lovely lady she was, only 62, and character graced her face even in death. In fact she didn’t appear to be dead, maybe not even asleep, but only lying there with her eyes closed. A dim light shone near her head. The room was still and quiet. I found myself visiting with her as I lingered beside her coffin. It was not an unpleasant experience. I sensed that she must have been a fine person in her sojourn in this world. The body even in death can speak of the character of the one who once lived there.

When I asked my friend about her I learned that I was her only visitor and that there would be no others. She had no relatives who were close enough or cared enough to attend her funeral. She had died in a nursing home, unknown and unloved. An attorney who cared for her small estate arranged for her burial, all by phone. In fact the mortician and an assistant would alone bury her, a “Christian burial” he assured me.

That experience so impressed me that it would have inspired a poem had I been a poet. Instead I wrote an essay on “The Woman I Cannot Forget” which appeared in this journal in 1974, which was in part an appeal to the churches to be more sensitive to those in nursing homes who have to die alone.

When I told that story to my Missouri mortician friend, he said to my surprise, “Then you might like to meet Vivian.” He took me to the visitation room where this 70-year old woman was laid out with all the loving care of a conscientious funeral home. As we stood beside her casket he introduced me to her, quite seriously and almost formally. We talked almost as if it were a three-way conversation, though Vivian did not say all that much. The mortician, a devout Christian, wondered if Vivian might know what was going on. I ventured that it was more than possible, and that she was likely pleased that we would visit with her like this.

Unlike the California woman Vivian was active to the end and she by no means died alone, even if her life was a troubled one. She was raised in the Church of Christ but had not been an active member. She had gone through four marriages, and she fell dead on a dance floor. Before I learned all this I thought I detected what Thoreau called “quiet desperation” etched in her face. She died having never been able to get life together, I figured, and I felt compassion for her. I could hear her telling me, “Nothing ever went right for me. Marriage after marriage. Job after job. Nothing. And I tried everything, including religion.”

While we lingered at her side I told my friend that there is no way for us to judge in such matters. Only God knows the heart, and only he knows the reasons why we are the way we are. It might well be that if we had been in Vivian’s shoes we would not have done as well as she did. Some people seem to get the short end of the stick all through life. God knows and he will judge accordingly, and we can all pray as did the lowly publican in Jesus’ story, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

My friend seemed impressed with the way I related to Vivian, so he wanted to tell me a story.

There was this black preacher who conducted a funeral in his chapel for a man, also black, who was shot to death in a saloon brawl. The man had lived on the dark side of life and died that way. The preacher told the mourners, “We all know how he lived and we know how he died, but I’m not here to pass judgment on him. I don’t own heaven and I don’t own hell. I’m not in charge of heaven, so I can’t say who goes there and who don’t. God owns heaven and he says who goes there and who don’t, and at this funeral we’re going to leave it right there.”

The black brother said it well. White folks and black folks alike sometime forget that it is the God of heaven and him alone who is sovereign over people’s souls. And if we turn up surprised over the weird people who come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the eternal kingdom, folk that are not supposed to be there as we see it, that too will be good for us.

We will at last have learned who owns heaven. Not an unimportant truth to learn either in this world or the next. —the Editor