No Heaven, No Hell

On Living Without Eternity

Putting my public writing on hold was difficult. At first, I was in denial, telling myself I’d get back to it soon. One month slipped by, then another. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to have written half a dozen essays in that time, yet somehow nearly five months had passed.

Then came the guilt.
A heavy, choking guilt — the kind that insists you should be producing like a machine. As if you can seize your art by the throat and force something out of the pure pain of obligation. PRODUCE, I would scream inwardly, a metaphorical knife pressed to my own neck.

Eventually, even that guilt faded, only to be replaced by deeper concerns. My health issues, once loud, were drowned out by something louder: the rapid decline of my parents. In August, I went home to see what was truly happening. I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone in my family was taking an alarmingly lax approach to our parents’ care. Out of all of us, I am the only one who isn’t convinced we will see each other again in heaven — so perhaps I’m the only one who feels the urgency of protecting this one precious, unrepeatable life.

The already‐fraught relationships within my family haven’t grown easier in this new phase of life, or rather these early shadows of death. Watching your parents age is one thing; deciding how they should be cared for is another. It becomes especially complicated when you fundamentally disagree on what happens after someone dies.

Thoughts of mortality can send you spiraling into darkness or lead you back to yourself. My body demanded rest, so I gave it what it asked for. I turned inward. Focused on myself, my parents, my journaling practice. By shutting off the spotlight I had placed on myself, I stopped performing. I quieted the noise of everything that demands attention without giving anything in return.

There are few things that truly feed my soul outside of writing, reading, and exploring my creativity. But I’ve always been drawn to caretaking. When my husband broke his back years ago, I was almost grateful for the time it gave us together, and for the purpose I felt while caring for him. I’ve felt that same purpose caring for my parents. Their decline has given me more time with them — tender, painful, necessary time — likely in the last chapter of their lives.

Even though my relationship with my family remains complicated, going back to where you come from can sometimes help you remember who you are. One reader wrote, in response to my essay Original Sin, that I’ve had to “dig [myself] out from under the superstructure of norms and mores of a religion, and THEN start looking to define [myself].” They were right.

Lying awake the other night, listening to the turbine-like whooshing of my mother’s C-PAP machine, I thought of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death and rewrote the first stanza in my mind:

Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
and soon began to see Death’s face
in every part of me.
Death creeps in,
he’s coming —
for everyone you know.

So what, then?
What does all this morbidity really teach us?

As the world burns and continues turning, you must do the same. Live your life. Love it fiercely. Stand up for what you believe in. And remember that your life doesn’t need to be noble or remarkable — only your own.

It’s okay to step back. It’s okay to rest. We are not machines; we are bodies in slow decay. The world decays around us. Resources are finite. Lifetimes are short. Like Sisyphus or Atlas, we strain beneath the weight we must carry. Whether you are pushing the rock uphill again or carrying the world on your shoulders, keep going. Whether you’ve already dug yourself out from under the superstructure of religion or not, your hands will continue to get dirty.

I am a lover.
I am an artist.
I am caring.
I am a good person.

Not revolutionary things, but, if these are the truths that define me, I am grateful for them. As I contemplate the morality and mortality of my life, and the lives of my parents, I can stand tall. I can meet my own standards of goodness without the threat of eternal punishment or the promise of eternal paradise.

Of all the places I’ve been — some holy, some haunted — I’m happy to be who I am.