Final Score

This was it.

“Here we go,” ol’ man Templet mumbled inarticulately. Everyone leaned in.

He anticipated drawing in his last breath in his beautiful death and delivering it back out with the weight of a fleeing soul. You only get so many breaths, and his last one was in sight. A beautiful end to a beautiful story. The Templet obituary would be the one everyone would want: a painless and peaceful death—who could ask for more? He couldn’t have scripted it any better.

His cue would wait just a moment, however, for he gave one last perusal of his surrounding family with their strangley silent tears and melodramatically quivering lips, some genuine, but most staged.

Tally time: one brother, one wife, two daughters, one missing son-in-law, one dead son-in-law, one son only half-there. Six Templets, counting himself, and two others.

Ol’ man William Templet paused at each—certainly the final moment could wait—for one more eyeful of each of them. One more stomach-ful of each.

The elderly brother soon to follow him into the unknown, but he had himself mentally departed already. Two daughters, neither with husbands any longer. The wife who stood inert, no longer able to participate in the morbid vigil for a man who had sewn her doubts for the reaping forty years earlier.

The grim reaping.

There were mistakes, sure. One son-in-law of whom he had never approved, and he was proven right by the painful explosion that shattered that marriage and an entire family. Or did he drive him off? Another son-in-law of whom he did approve—but he was proven a fool when the suicide happened. His widow was his feckless, reckless youngest—Suzanne—was it her fault she didn’t have a clue? If it was, was that his fault in raising her the way he did?

Or in anything else he might have, done?

Tally time:

--one unhappy wife,

--one divorced, unhappy daughter,

--one ne’er-do-well son,

--one brother lost in dementia, and

--one clueless, licentious widowed daughter, his youngest.'

His youngest, Suzanne.

He had done his best with Suzanne. She had become an hysteric about forty years ago—as Suzy—when still a mere child. He remembered how it was a change that had come over her in only a couple of months when she was a teenager. He still remembered the Sweet Sixteen party when she screamed at all of her friends to leave. She was defiant, had an answer for everything. The child who knew more than her parents.

What’s done was done, he realized, in the wisdom of his impending death; he realized that he had ended up trudging on with only the tools he had at the time.

When Suzanne was older, he had pinned all of his hopes on her husband in the marriage had pushed for. Too hard? He fantasized that man helping her navigate her astray life, but then he had navigated himself to the end of his own.

The old, dying man felt the draw of that same vacuum, and it was seductive, indeed.

The abyss. His own world was now flat, and he was moving toward his own finite horizon. Toward the edge.

He snorted a laugh, which to his audience sounded like a cough, prompting raised eyebrows and a few open mouths of concern. Concern for what? They knew the deal. They knew what was happening here. He could start hemorrhaging out of his eyeballs and why would it matter now?

He wondered if he only got so many laughed allotted in life. If so, was that his last one?

This was it.

After his eyes finished their sweep, the Templet passing-in-review complete, he privately reaffirmed his love for each one of them whether they wanted it or not; whether he meant it or not; even to his son, with whom he had estranged himself, then reconciled, all because of a son’s weakness and certainly not a father’s weakness. Had David’s drug abuse been his fault, like Suzanne’s fate?

He thought not. He did what he had to do with the tools he had at the time.

Would he have done things differently? Sure, now that he paged through the last part of his book—the index of his life, the final tally—any item available for reconsideration by just remembering it. It would take just a reminisce for a brief revisit to his life in review. But no re-dos. You trudge on with the tools you have at the time, and this time, on his deathbed, the tools were final: one hammer and six nails to shut his coffin for jettison into the abyss.

His life. How'd he do?

Were his couple of billion heartbeats tabulated somewhere in the great eternity’s actuary table of life along with the tallied daughters, sons-in-law, wife, brother, and biological son? Had he lived enough, trading one hour’s less sleep here and two hours’ less sleep there for three more hours of living? Or three more dollars? Did he break even? He would soon find out: the afterlife, if there really were one.

Or nothing? The joke on us—his entire life story and sentience negated into irrelevance by oblivion?

Templet chose to believe the afterlife version. Had to be. Better be. If not, he would strain to sense his oblivion just to resent it, fighting a paradox, contradicting oblivion itself; his anger would prove so powerful as to shatter the constraints by which oblivion imprisons one’s worth, fate, destiny, and intrinsic importance to self. And, of course, to the ones hovering over him in his final hour.

Go with the afterlife, he thought, because believing the alternative would muster infidel feelings that would be hard to defend in that afterlife.

The afterlife.

Would it be Heaven, perfect happiness, camaraderie with those who went before him? All his dreams come true? Where one dead son-in-law lived, the other reglued a family, and where even David could be brought back into the fold, whole? Where whatever happened to Suzy to make her so hysterical and live as only a half-personality, had not?

Where every facet of every relationship beamed beautifully and perfectly? Angels, seraphim, cherubim, and God Almighty himself, and Jesus and Moses and Mother Mary? That would be nice.

Wings would be cool.

But he realized such was his childhood afterlife version, little Willie Templet’s religion of rules and Heaven and Hell, reward and punishment, as taught to him by Nuns in grade school. He had grown up, and so had his religion.

His religion, he protested, arguing as a grown man, was an adult version. Not little Willie’s, but Ol’ man William Templet’s. A rational construct that only a Supreme Being could create. Sure, he could have some ideas, such as communion on a holy, supranatural, and fulfilling level with everyone who’s ever existed.

Ever?

His version also placed it outside of time, since ever would be ridiculous. It wouldn’t be with everyone who’s ever existed, but everyone who has existed, exists, and would ever exist. What a presence! And in having an adult faith in a supreme being, he realized that however sensibly wonderful he thought his destination, that the limits of human understanding—within the capabilities of that 3-pound brain—would only be a scratch on the ultimate reality. He knew he would be blown away by this next reality.

Yes. And finally whole enough to grasp it. Well beyond the three pounds of brain.

He smiled. He would soon be with all of his loves—the ones who ever lived or live now—many at his bedside, maybe—and the ones who will ever live—great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and on. His massive tree planted on the day he was born, whose branches were all made up of umbilical cords, all reeled them back in for self-nonself and all-else consolidation.

He could only imagine.

He did one more sweep of the gallery and then smiled. One more smile wouldn’t affect his lifetime tally of smiles. Even if you’re allotted only so many, there must be plenty room for more.

Everyone stood, but not because it was standing-room-only. Now, he felt the recession of time and space that could only be filled by his last breath. The last one on his list of breaths. He drew it in; it failed to return out. The weight of a fleeing soul would find another way to exit.

He passed a sudden, unbridled torrent of colonic gas. Everyone knew it was his last word. Some thought it was befitting.

The silent tears became noisy. The end of a chapter can be just as sorrowful as the loss of the one who creates the ellipsis…the next chapter would follow without him.

A sobering reminder of one’s own mortality is a moving experience. Hands squeezed others’ hands. Quivering became soft cries. They all sought the eyes of each other, sweeping the circle as he had done just a moment earlier. But there was no cacophony or din from them, for his had been a good death. Diginified. A very nice death, indeed. And it didn’t get out of control, for not much would change in their lives.

For life, after all, was for the living, who now were thinking about bequeaths, inheritance, and hand-me-downs.

This was it, William Templet thought as his last thought before he died. He had lived as the man who knew everything better than everyone else—the man who had an answer for everything.

Except for now.

Now what happens? he asked himself. One last time he looked at his family hovering in dutiful vigil, even as he closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, his mind’s eye, his childhood religion smacked him hard. There stood the pearly gates, very high and firmly shut and secured by a very large, solid gold lock, its key hanging from a gold chain on the white-robed man standing behind the dais between him and his afterlife.

Wow, he thought, as a sentiment he had always had, has had, and ever will have.

Wow.

He eyed the keeper of the gates. Who would speak first? Certainly, it wasn’t his place to. He would wait. He laughed at the concept of waiting in a place outside of time. He laughed out loud.

“That’s number 674,843,” the man said, adding an entry to the open book that sat on his dais.

“Excuse me?”

“That was your 674,843rd laugh, although I really should add it to the 1,642 chuckles. Do you care, really? I mean at this point, we really stop counting and tally it all up, even though you only get so many.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I do not understand.”

“For the man who knows everything better than everyone else? The man who has an answer for everything?” The man turned some pages on the book on his dais. “Mr. Templet—Mr. William Templet—you have laughed 674,842 laughs, guffaws, and hoots in your lifetime. Fewer chuckles and hardly any chortles, although I’ve always found that to be splitting hairs. Or splitting haws, I should say.” He laughed at his own joke.

“How many laughs does that make for you?” he asked the shining man, hoping to engage with him on a level playing field of parlance.

“Oh, you don’t want to know,” the man answered. Both shot each other a droll grin, as if rehearsed. “My, my, look at the snickers. You were very snarky, Mr. Templet.”

The man fingered a glowing gold ribbon that sat deep within the packed pages of the book and used it to open to that section. “Ah,” he said, “eructations.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eructations. Nothing? Don’t know that word? How ’bout belches?”

“Oh, yes, belches.”

“24, 205 eruct—er—belches.”

“You’ve counted my belches?”

The shining man looked back down at the book, eyeing some more shining ribbons of different colors. He methodically flipped them one by one, pausing at each. Finally, one section caught his attention. “Yes, belches,” he answered, then looked back up at Templet. “Oh, I have everything here,” he added. “Heartbeats, blinks—"

“How many blinks, exactly?” Templet’s sarcasm didn’t resonate as obviously as he had meant it.

“Little more than half a billion, each eye.”

“Each eye?” The ineffective sarcasm missed its mark again.

“504, 576,342, left eye. 504, 575, 622, right eye.”

“They’re different? Are you sure your data are correct? Shouldn’t they be the same?”

“We count winks as blinks. You obviously are a right-eyed winker.”

“Of course,” Templet said, “that would explain it.” He was confused, feeling denied the mysteries of the universe by such superficiality. “This is all so very silly, isn’t it?” He watched the shining man page through the book again and grew impatient. “And this all means what?” he asked, with a touch of a demanding tone included.

“You mean, besides your winks being exactly 720?”

“Yes.”

“In due time, Mr. Templet, in due time. Now, sneezes, ejaculations…”

“Ejaculations?”

“Of course."

“Am I to understand we’re going to tally all of my bodily functions?”

”Of course.”

“When do we get to the important things?"

“The important things?”

“Yes! The good deeds…the…”

“The sins, sir?” The man’s demeanor changed. “Oh, don’t you worry. In good time. Funny you should ask.”

“Sure,” Templet replied. He didn’t like the glowing man’s different expression. It was an unfriendly one, a judging one.

“So, yes,” he continued. “Ejaculations—orgasms. It says here…4,209.”

“Wow,” Templet whispered to himself.

“Oh, don’t be so proud. It’s actually much less than average. Famously less, actually.”

Templet lowered his voice to a whisper. “My wife and I had…issues,” he said quietly.

“Everyone has issues, Mr. Templet. And you surely had yours. Incidentally, we’re not counting masturbation. Otherwise, it’d be quite a different number, wouldn’t it? No, we shan’t add them. But, you’re right-handed, are you?”

“Meaning what?”

“You’re a right-eyed winker and, like your winks, you’re a right-handed wanker! But relax, ’cause we don’t put much weight on self-pleasuring.”

“Thank God.”

“Don’t thank God. It’s not that He approves; it’s just a don’t-ask, don’t-tell thing. But although we don’t put much weight on it, we still count each and every time.”

“O.K., so how many masturbations…if you must?”

“And I must. Well,” the shining man said, focusing on a line in the book, “it’s a footnote here, um…Whoa!”

“Yeah, I get it, more than my ejaculations.”

“Your official ejaculations, that is. And way more,” he paused, “that is.”

“Of course, as you say, my…official…those things.”

“Ejaculations,” the shining man repeated.

“Yeah, those. Thanks.”

Whose afterlife was this? Templet wondered.

This fit nowhere in any version of an afterlife in anyone’s religion—the children’s version or the adult version. No one’s. This was a Monty Python version. William Templet’s face fell. He appeared a bit dejected.

“Don’t fret, William. Can I call you William?”

“Sure.”

“Your maturation was higher than average. That’s something to be proud of, I suppose.”

“In what way?” Templet asked. “What’s average maturation? How much higher was mine?”

“The average maturation, of course, is the median between an Oxford-educated gentleman majoring in Philosophy and a transient, boorish sheetrock drywall worker.”

Templet gulped. “My first job was hanging drywall,” he said guiltily.

“You see, William, how far you’ve come? I mean, you didn’t go to Oxford—not even Harvard.”

“Princeton? Does Princeton count?”

“Really?”

“O.K., I was accepted there.”

“Really?”

“O.K., I applied there. Doesn’t that count?”

“Hmm,” the man said sadly, “not as much as Harvard. In fact, I think you’re probably closer to drywall installation than Oxford on the grand scheme of things. And, let’s see, you didn’t even do that well in hanging sheetrock, either…only 6200 square yards.”

“If you’re counting, and of course—”

“Oh, I am.”

“It was a summer job,” Templet blurted. “So long ago. It was to help my daughter pay for her abortion—uh-oh, is that a problem?”

“Abortion? Hmm…no, that’s not a problem—well, wait, what I mean is that it’s not your biggest problem. I do say, you two must have been very close. The daughter who could confide anything.”

“Yes, we were close.”

“Close.”

“Yeah, like I said…close.” He realized his mistake right away.

If something like the exact number of orgasms was well documented, certainly the number of abortions—whose exact number was probably more than the one he knew of—wouldn’t be a secret, either.

“Does that make me a bad person?” he asked the shining man.

“No, not that, because according to our records, the number of abortions she had was the number zero.' He smiled at him. "She didn’t have any abortions, William.”

“She didn’t? Oh, thank God—” The man waved his finger. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

“No, and her lies didn’t make you a bad person—more like a chump. She used that money for a breast enlargement.”

“I thought she looked different by the time we got to beach weather.”

“You liked them, didn’t you!”

“So…” Templet said, “that little tramp.”

“She also used the money for her gas and cigarettes and to buy her cocaine. She was never pregnant, though. Surely you knew that, didn’t you?”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Do you want to know how many times she had sex?”

“Not really,” Templet answered, but he knew the jig was up. “She’s my daughter, sir. I really don’t think the confidant stuff goes that far—that personal."

“Personal? That's funny. Nice try, William. Gee, forty-three years ago, from May 3 to June 22, why…she had sex as many times as you, and that—Mr. Templet—is a very curious thing. That—Mr. Templet—is what makes you a bad person. She was only sixteen.”

“So, you’re saying I’m a bad person for my daughter having sex when she was sixteen?”

“With you, yes.”

Truth be told, William Templet had been waiting for this shoe to drop. A single shoe from an amputated man who didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“William,” the shining man said, “on your deathbed you had wondered how she got like she did. You forgave yourself with the explanation that you did what you did with the tools that you had. Tsk, tsk, William. This isn’t good, sir. And I haven’t even gotten to the others who were so attentive to your final moments on Earth. You wondered about them, as well. That was quite a collection of human beings you screwed up. How’d you put it—the best you could manage with the tools you had at the time. You used some tools! You re-wired all their brains. It's going to take generations —for things to rewire correctly. They all came into the world perfect, and by the time you left yours, your actions had run up quite a tally. Shall I tally them up for you? You know…as you said, the important things?”

“No. Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother, really.”

“I guess that’ll send me where I need to go?” he said.

“Yes, William. All….from the man who knew everything better than everyone else. The man who had an answer for everything.” The shining man stroked his long, white beard as he fixed his gaze intensely on Templet. “And by my tally, you’re going there for the 3,493rd time. Better luck next time, William. I'm sure the 3,494th'll be the charm."