ROSIE IN THE AFTERLIFE

It starts with Rosie being ery ill..

I’ll fly one day, just you wait… that was what Rosie thought as she lay in her bed wondering when the pain would go away.

And she did fly the very next day. It was her mother who found the shell that had been Rosie, cold and no longer hurting, and still, as only the dead can be still.

“Wait for me, darling…” she whispered, “I didn’t carry you for all those weeks to lose you like this, after only fifteen years.”

Somewhere out there, beyond the stars, she heard her daughters promise that of course she’d wait…

“It might be a long time,” the angel told her.

The angel was Brian, and he was waiting too. He’d promised his mother, and that just had to be that. There can be no going back on promises, that much was clear.

“I’ll wait for ever if need be,” Rosie told him, “I owe her that much.”

“I understand,” whispered Brian, “for ever can be a really long time, you know. Can I wait with you? To ease the time as it passes?Would you mind?”

“I’d like that,” sighed Rosie, “I was ill for so long, at least a year I think, and when you’re as ill as I was it can get very lonely.”

“I was killed,” Brian told her, “a man came along, a brute of a man, and he told me to lie on the ground or he’d kill me and I wouldn’t lie down on the ground…”

“So he killed you?” asked Rosie.

“Right there and then. And I heard my mother weep. I think it was for me but it may have been for the man she killed because he’d killed me when I refused to lie on the ground and my mum had seen. I think she loved that brute of a man and I know she still sleeps with him. I mean, sleeps! There’s not much of that going on!”

“But you’re spying on her anyway?” Rosie couldn’t help being curious. It’s what mum had said to her so many times it was like one of those old fashioned records on repeat.

“It isn’t spying, just that I need to know,” replied Brian shortly, “I love my mum and I want to make sure she doesn’t fall for the brute.”

“I understand,” whispered Rosie, who didn’t really, “tell me, Brian, where are we? Is this Heaven?”

He laughed at her. “Goodness me, no!” he exclaimed, “I don’t know if anyone calls it anything, but if they do it’s not heaven. It’s where we wait when we promise someone that we’ll wait for them however long it takes. When we’re alive it’s all little fibs or big lies, about almost everything, and here there can be no lies because what’s the point of lying if we’re dead?”

“I never told mummy lies,” protested Rosie, “not once in fifteen years!”

“So when she asked you what was wrong if you were upset, did you ever say not much, or nothing even if you were really in pain? Or if she asked you if you liked something she’d cooked for you but you hated it, did you never tell her that it was delicious and can you have some more?”

“White lies. I guess I did tell a few of those,” admitted Rosie.

“No matter what colour they are they’re still lies,” Brian told her.

“I guess they are,” sighed Rosie, “tell me, Brian, is there nowhere we can go, say for a bit of privacy. To be on our own, something like that?”

He shook what might have been his head and said, “Why, have you fallen out with me already? Anyway, there’s nobody else here. We’re alone here, and that’s how it’s going to stay. For ever, if need be, unless our mothers come… So do you hate me already?”

She blushed, or might have blushed if there was ny blood in her spirit to make her cheeks go red. “No. I like you, but sometimes I like being on my own. Say to go to the toilet or brush my hair. You know, personal things like that.”

He shook his head. “You’ll never need the toilet now and you have no hair,” he said, “only the memory of it, and that looks good to me.”

“I think I want to go back to my mum,” she said after a long pause.

“You can,” he smiled, “some do, you know, they find out what it’s like where we are and decide they don’t like it. One or two return and find that their body’s been cremated because they’re dead, or buried six feet down or frozen in a pathology lab because they’re dead, and shouldn’t be. O they find there’s no way out of the coffin, and then they’ve gone back and can’t return to this special place. You can’t die twice, you know, and you’ve died once already.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” ased Rosie, curiously.

“Because I did it. I went back.”

“So you died twice?”

“If only! No, my flesh had been disposed of. My heart went to a boy of eleven who needed a new heart, so it’s not dead, my liver went to an old woman, so it’s not dead, and my lungs to Jeremy.”

“Who’s Jeremy?” She couldn’t help being curious.

“He was a nice enough kid. He died whilst they were trying to stitch my lungs into him and he came here, which is how I know about it. He’d promised his mother that he’d wait for her, and he didn’t have long to wait. When he died during the operation her heart was broken and she took a whole load of tablets, and died herself. She was so pleased to meet up with him, and they wandered off together. It was lovely to watch.”

“Where did they go?”

“Oh, beautifully, between the stars, hand in hand, or they would have if they’d had a hand between them!”

“What then?”

“Oh, yes, it broke my heart as I watched them. He told his mum that he missed her, and she told him she was so sorry that he missed out on all the life he might have had if she hadn’t smoked when he was tiny, and he said it didn’t matter, she hadn’t known, and she’d said but she had known really, deep down, but carried on anyway, she said she couldn’t stop, and then they ended.”

“They ended?”

“They fizzled out, and were no more. Jeremy said he was sorry and she said she was happy to hear it, and then they were no more. I suppose they became one with the great big universe, their spirits dissolving into the light of the stars…”

“Do we all have to do that? It seems a bit… Draconian,” asked Rosie.

“I think so,” smiled Brian, “so I tell you what...let’s pretend we’re making love right where we are. There’s nobody anywhere near to say we shouldn’t, and it’s such a meaningful thing to do.”

Rosie stared at him crossly. “What a thing for you to suggest,” she said, “And to think that I’m only fifteen!”

© Peter Rogerson 30.04.23

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