Replying to a kind reader I wrote that I had heard you arrive in heaven with only the stuff you gave away and then I thought about it all afternoon while gardening.
The implications are massive, if it’s true, because the reverse would also obtain: the more you tried to take it with you, the less you would have. You’d meet large numbers of Ancient Egyptian Mummies, several vehicles short of a procession, wandering around on foot looking for their kidneys. They’d be shadowed by any number of ancient Chinese emperors mad as hatters with mercury poisoning, darting in and out, checking under the cumulo-nimbus for concubines and behind the altostratus for their armies. Any-century miser millionaires would be penniless and large landowners wouldn’t even have the six foot by two they were buried in.
For those of us in the lower income upper outgo group the great leveller is wonderfully cheering until you consider just exactly what you have given away in the course of your life so far.
Some of us are going to have to subsist on the half-sucked sweets of childhood, the stale bread that we threw to the ducks, the chocolates out of the box that we don’t like at all and anything else we got rid of by giving it away. I can see at this point, that you’ve jumped ahead in horror but try to stay in childhood just a while longer. I used to give visiting friends roses off the bush that rambled over the coal shed. They were manky, insectivorous, disintegrating and not actually mine to give as I hadn’t grown them. I will also have two awful vinyl records I gave to a friend of a friend I felt sorry for and all the toys taken from me each Christmas to be given to the St Nicholas Boys Home. So I will see my puppets again, especially Muffin the Mule, also my second hand Little Grey Rabbit, who I was persuaded by crocodile tears to give to the poor children. I always was a soft touch; though perhaps I won’t get them if the giving has to be spontaneous and not prompted.
My son had a great friend from school who didn’t have much of anything but shared his treasures and will be the proud owner of a fork handle, an interesting pebble, half a coin and a broken plastic shape.
Back to the food, sadly. I was sometimes server at the school dinner table and gave to mine enemies the stuff I didn’t want to eat myself. I will be in for a ton of leathery ginger pudding top and a small ocean of lumpy custard. I don’t think I ever succeeded in giving my free school milk away, which is just as well because I didn’t like it the first time round.
Will there be cabbage in heaven? I’m sorry, there will be. I only hope I gave someone some vinegar to help it go down but I doubt it. I will also get a bar of chocolate. I was about twelve and not allowed to buy it for myself so I walked the half hour and back to the shop and bought it for my mother and got told off for being a spendthrift and shouted at while I stood in disgrace on the doormat, I didn’t understand and still don’t but at least I’ll be able to have a bar of chocolate while I think about it.
A vast number of my generation will get hundreds of wonky knitted blanket squares. For some reason that escaped me at the time and still does, it was considered to be the epitome of Christian Charity to knit small squares with left over wool, that were sewn together into blankets to be sent to Africa to help the poor. Despite having the geographical knowledge of an eight year old who had never left her own country, I was still aware that Africa was large and hot. I couldn’t understand how having a thick, wonky, tickly wool blanket was going to help some poor soul in sub Saharan Africa. I still don’t. If you were by chance one of those poor African children who was inexplicably gifted a scratchy wool blanket by a well-meaning missionary I would love to know if it helped. At all. I can certainly see how anyone would be glad of a square knitted by my grandmother. She did them diagonally, from corner to corner, never looking once and they were so good draftsmen could have drawn round them to design buildings, I thought. The ones I made, which I will meet again, unfortunately, were knitted, knotted, snotted-on and scraped together in downward, theoretically straight rows that came out grey, regardless of the colour of wool that went into them. If I’m relying on them to keep me cosy up above, I’m going to be chilly all over.
Proceeding backwards in time just for a moment, I’m wondering if breast feeding a baby counts as a gift, especially in these days of instant formula? It definitely has to be given and takes quite a lot of concentration to part with at first. It also sticks the bottles to the counter top if you’re trying to think ahead and go out for an hour, leaving the infant with someone else and a bottle of you. What if you get all of that back again? Perhaps we’ll be able to spot the prolific feeders by all the fluffy clouds stuck to their ample bosoms.
In with all the deliberate gifting, will, of course, be all the Christmas presents. Those dreadful things you had to buy for some far off relative who turned up at the last minute. Those of us who survived the seventies are going to have beige and brown Fair Isle tank tops from cheap chain stores to go with all the novelty tee towels we gave to all the Aunties we didn’t quite like enough to spend time thinking about a really nice gift. There will be an awful lot of terrible booze. Party Sevens, draught sherry dispensed into your own bottles, British Port-Alike, Wincarnis Tonic Wine. Bottles! Oh Lordy! Heaven is going to smell of all the bath salts, street market branded perfume rip-offs, celebrity sponsored after shave and anything in a plastic bottle decorated with fake lily of the valley that we gave because it looked more than it cost. It could be worse, I know someone who saved the free plastic roses that came with the big boxes of washing powder in the 1960s and gave them as birthday presents. We will, of course, be getting back any rubbish we bought at a charity fair and gave to the neighbours. Also all the holiday presents we gave to the friend who fed the cat while we were away. We’ll be clanking around with slightly rude novelty bottle openers, slightly rude plastic key rings, slightly rude BBQ aprons, slightly large, slightly fraying woven sun hats and dozens of raffia shopping bags badly embroidered with over large things in bright colours that might be native flowers, or not.
Cheap boxes of chocolates. Cut-price cheeseboards with shrink-wrapped European Union Cheddar, Novelty biscuits, novelty crackers, novelty nuts and novelty novels containing tiny tins of novelty tea. Oh dear, the last laugh will be on us and tea time will be a trial, but only if we can get the cheap toaster and the novelty butter knife (in the shape of a cow, how unusual, thank you very much) to work.
Socks, socks, millions of socks. The uncles will be laughing. (Mine were very kind and will have very many ten shilling notes.)
Let us make a start on all the stuff we gave to charity shops. Oh dear. What load of old tat will you have to wear? Has anyone given underwear or are we all going to have to go commando?
I’m going to have a lot of dolls and I know a lot of craftsmen and women who are going to have, in some cases, really good examples of their work that they gave away. It isn’t just beginning artists trying to make a name for themselves either, I know some celebrated artisans who have been very generous out of kindness and for worthy causes. I know of fair organisers who have given tables to charities and charity table workers who have given their time.
Time. Now there’s a gift.
Do you get it back, just for you? If you do, every hour spent reading a book to a child will be its own reward (and it’s nice to have literate children.) There will be doctors and nurses who did unpaid over time, who find they have all the time in the world. Every mother who got up in the night when they were tired beyond tired to comfort a child, will find endless comfort.
The time you get back isn’t the paid time, if you get back what you gave. Voluntary overseas workers will have years of it. All those retirees running the charity shops will have many years of ten to four and extra Sundays sorting out the stock given back, just when they thought they’d run out of time.
And, speaking as an adult (but not a child) vegetarian, do we give life to creatures raised as food, or do we take it? Do you have a herd of cows on your conscience? Will you be cooking for a clutch of chickens? Waving at all the fish fingers? I still have a lot of smoked haddock on my conscience because I like making kedgeree. I am going to be pestered by the haddock mafia, whose fin length macs and beige trilbys do not conceal the leering yellow face beneath as they hang around the corners of clouds smoking and coughing. ‘Heugh, Missus, look at this slice out of my middle, that’s part of you now, that is. Suck, hack hack hack, suck. I want it back. At your earliest convenience like. Heugh, heugh, hack hack.’
I once read that carrots scream as you pull them from the ground but I’m trying not to think about it.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? All the things you’re trying not to think about will catch up with you as well as all the gifts. Interestingly, I think intention will be everything. I think a wiggly crayon drawing from a child, with love and work will count more than the Christmas list of the well-off. I don’t think any gifts given by celebrities to ‘charidee’ to smooth the tax burden and raise the profile will count at all. Not that rich people will be barred. I think Bill Gates will get back every life he saved with his foundation. How very brilliant to work so hard at making so much money and then work equally hard to give it all away.
So if it works if you’re rich or poor and the love and the intention and the purely altruistic motivation count, random acts of kindness such as smiling at a person for no reason except to make the world a happier place, will make a happier place of the next world too. It’s even more important to be gracious in victory and gracious in defeat. Being vindictive is right out, because if that’s what you gave, that’s what you’ll get back.
Have you given ten tons of gossip and tittle tattle? Ooh dear, what a worry.
Have you given any of the following: tongue lashings, tellings off, a piece of your mind, the benefit of your opinion, your input, your control, your organisational ability, your overview, your will, your command, your control, your veto, your say-so, your final decision?
You’ll get them all back, every last one.
Have you given your support, your sympathy, your love, your hanky, your arm, your shoulder, your ears, a cuddle, a kiss, a hug, your gloves in the snow, your shade in the sun, your patience to a learner, your forbearance, your kindness, your praise, your approval, your encouragement, your time, your help, a leg up, a hand down, a hand out, a hand hold, your corneas, your kidneys, your heart and soul? Well that’s okay ‘cause you get all of them back, too.
Top of the list will be those who gave their lives, especially those who gave their lives to save lives, but also those who gave their youth and strength to help a good cause, those who used their brains to find new ways to make the world better, those who gave their nights of rest to puzzle out a problem that would help us all. You don’t have to be a great intellect, Mother Teresa was not very intellectual but she was a terrific giver and the absolute example of things you can give that don’t cost a penny and that could be essential to get back again, balanced against any of the negatives of a normal life. She gave patience, understanding, shelter, a place to be, dignity, respect, a worth and a value and love. How can you love hundreds and hundreds of down and outs when it’s sometimes really hard to love your own family? Perhaps it takes practice.
If it is true that you get back what you freely gave, that’s consumerism down the pan. Wealth creation is the worst idea ever, if what truly defines you is the stuff you gave away.
On the other hand, what if the stuff you receive for free, without merit, is removed from the total of your worth? It wouldn’t be fair to get back what you gave if you didn’t first have to give back what you took.
What have you taken?
Time off (ever pulled a sick day?) government hand outs, other children’s toys, the last piece of chocolate, sweets from a shop, a place in a queue, a seat in a cinema, ‘freebies’ from work, advantage (of anyone willing, or inexperienced, or young,), the place of someone better qualified by fast talking, someone’s confidence, someone’s glory, someone’s savings (banks and credit card companies, you know who you are), the mickey.
My mother has a saying, ‘Never go up empty handed.’ She employs it when you are just about to go upstairs, as a way of keeping the downstairs tidy. (It also ensures a collection of shoes to trip over on the bottom three steps, but that’s another story.) Extrapolated to the sins and virtues of a life, going up empty handed is possibly what you should be aiming for.
The ancient Egyptians (still wandering around looking for their kidneys) had a belief that in the hall of judgement your good deeds were weighed against your bad deeds. If overall your conscience was clear and your heart light as a feather, you proceeded to the Elysian fields but if your bad deeds outweighed the good, the Eater of Souls gobbled you up until all that was left of you was a big burp.
I suspect it’s all much simpler and more karmic, what you took is taken from you but you get back what you gave, until what you are left with is you. Essence of self and: balance, the secret of life, all neatly righted in your life by you as you live. The give and take of life, taken and given by us, every day, nothing extra added to the universe, nothing missing. (It’s enough to stop you going: Cor blimey! Look at her! and look at your self instead.)
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JaneLaverick.com – mysteries of the universe and a laugh.
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