Only once did I get to ask my dad what happens after you die. By now, he knows. But back then he would've been guessing.
Side by side in my bunk bed, we faced the stick-on, glow-in-the-dark stars just a couple feet above us. I was somewhere around 10 years old, but I'm not trying to pin down that number. I like the memory, and I worry if I try to get too many of the details right I'll end up making stuff up, so I'm intentionally trying to hold back from remembering "too hard."
At the time, I had a simple picture of heaven. The people were all spread out on a big white plane under a uniformly blue sky, kind of like they were walking on an endless sheet of printer paper on a summer day. My grandma was one of the only people there for some reason, even though she was (and is) alive. I guess I didn't know who else to put there.
I asked my dad something about whether it all went on forever. That's what I was really curious about. How people spent their time when they had so much of it. Even back then, I had the hunch that things could get old real fast. Forever seemed like a long time, and heaven was supposed to be forever. So was it?
I don't really know, he said. Then he said some more things. I remember how small he looked when he tried to answer me. Up until that point I assumed that my dad had all the answers.
I went on: And speaking of getting old, what happens to me if I go to heaven as a kid, like right now? Do I stay a kid forever? Is that fair? And does grandma stay old forever? Should I try to die at just the right age? And is Max (family dog) gonna be there? Because I already put him (also still alive) next to grandma.
He tried to answer. I think he brought up the Torah. But I could see he was explaining to himself as much as he was to me.
It was the first time I really saw my dad as a human person, like me. It was also the first time I felt a deep sense of existential unease about the fact that I was gonna die, and no one knew the what, how, or why of it all.
A few years after that, he died. He was the first and last person I ever really asked these questions to.
At around 14, the implications of "heaven going on forever" lead to my first full-on panic attack. It was the first of many. It's related to the idea that when you die, the only options for what happens next are horrifying. A heaven of any kind is horrifying because it goes on forever. No longer existing is horrifying. A reincarnation where you're doomed to have your soul recycled forever is horrifying.
Now that I'm older, and closer to my dad's age, I try to think of asking "what happens when you die" as making a semantic mistake. It's like asking "what color is the shirt I'm not wearing?" Once you're dead, there's no one for anything to happen to. So maybe that's the resolution I'm looking for.
But if a kid — my kid — asked me that question, is that the answer I would give him? Could I bring myself to tell him that the closest thing we have to heaven is actually this moment, right now, side by side under the phosphorescent stars?