Trials and Tribulations

Ninety-two-year-old Silas Townsend is at death’s door. His eyes are half-closed and are sunk deep in their sockets. His skin is blotchy and pale. His jaw hangs slack. A deep rattle comes from his chest as Death presses down on it. Still, his old, cracked, hardened rubber ball of a heart continues to beat.

           Death leans closer and smells the sweat breath of the dying and whispers, “It’s almost time, Silas. I hope you are ready. Think back on your pathetic life and all the harm you caused others. You’ve done such horrible things! And for what? To put a few stolen dollars in your pocket? Do you think any of that will bear well with God? The God you gave up on when you were twelve? The God who let that terrible priest humiliate you and your family in front of your friends. Putting you down because you were poor and your father was a drunk. Didn’t you know? You were supposed to forgive him, Silas. Yes, he was a priest with a judging and mean nature, but he was only human. Instead, you blamed him for making you into the person you became. Ha, Ha, Ha! No. That was just an excuse to do what you wanted to do. I think you will be staying with Satan for a long, long time!”

           Silas’s life flashes before him like a swift and rapid river, washing away everything in its path. When the breathing stops, and the heart fails to beat one last time, the only thought remaining to Silas is, “God. Forgive me.”

                                                                         …

  Silas regains consciousness, sitting on an industrial bench of vinyl and chrome. Glancing around, he knits his eyebrows together. “Huh?" Everywhere Silas looks, people fill the seats in an immense hall.  A cheap gray carpet covers the floor, and long fluorescent lights dangle from a hung ceiling covered with textured tiles that dampen sound. Round speakers are playing church hymns.

   In front of Silas stands a man behind a podium. In the background hangs a red velvet curtain with gold trim. The gentleman has a long white bread and a complexion that suggests he might have spent years working outside.  On the podium is a giant book. The man runs his finger up and down the pages as if seeking something. Eventually, his bushy eyebrows shoot up. “AH-HA! Here’s what I’m looking for!” He pushes his glasses back up his nose and, in a loud voice, calls out, “Silas Townsend, will you stand, please?” Silas’s knees tremble, and his heart races as he stands- along with about a thousand other Silas’s. The enigmatic man frowns, “Silas T. Townsend!” A few hundred sit back down. Rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, the announcer sighs and tries again, “Silas Theodore Townsend?” Many more men return to their seats, leaving Silas and four others still standing. The gentleman narrows his eyes and inhales deeply. Stroking his beard a few times, he bellows, “Silas Theodore Townsend, born in Whitinsville Hospital on January 2, 1931!” Silas is now the only one left standing. 

“Whew!’ exhales the man. “Thank you, Mr. Townsend. If you step into the center aisle, an assistant will come for you shortly.”  Glancing nervously around, Silas does as he is asked. Immediately, a woman materializes in his newly vacated seat. While gawking at this phenomenon, Silas feels someone take his arm.

 “Would you be so kind as to follow me, Mr. Townsend?” Silas can’t believe his eyes. He has never seen such a beautiful woman in all his life. She looks like one of those presenters on game shows like “Let’s Make a Deal!”

 Silas hesitates, “P-Pardon me, but could you tell me where we are?” 

The girl flashes her remarkably white teeth in her permanently fixed smile and cocks her head. “Where do you think we are?” she asks. Silas shrugs his shoulders and stammers, “I-I don’t know. M-Maybe Heaven?”  The girl snickers. “Oh, goodness, no. This is God’s waiting area!   See those doors over there? Well, one says Enter, and the other says Exit. The door in between is the Accounting Room. That’s where we’re going.”

  Silas raises an eyebrow. “Are you saying that there is money in Heaven?” Taking his arm, the pretty girl ushers Silas toward the Accounting door. “No. This is where you will be making an account of your life, you know, to see which door you’ll be going through.” As they approach, Silas hears celebration and songs of praise issuing from the Enter door. He hears wailing and screaming from the Exit door and is aware of the slight smell of brimstone.  Silas swallows hard as they enter the Accounting room.

   The Accounting room is an infinite space filled with cubicles.  The air is full of gospel muzak. The assistant walks Silas down to a nearby cubicle and stops. “Pardon me, Paul, I have a Mr. Silas Theodore Townsend here for you.” The accountant is sitting with his back to Silas. He growls, “Yeah, yeah, send him in already!” The angel gestures with her hand for Silas to enter the cubby. Then she winks and mouths the words, “Good Luck.”

Silas looks around. The man’s cubicle is a total disaster. Papers are piled high on every available surface. As a nearby pile starts to avalanche toward the floor, the accountant snarls, “Dang-it-all,” and slams a heavy book down on the escaping pile.  Paul tells Silas to put a stack of reports on the floor and sit in the chair. Paul excuses himself and makes a phone call while simultaneously typing on his computer. Silas nervously sits with his hands folded in his lap. 

Across the way, he sees a pillar with a clock, but it has no hands. Under the clock is a poster that states, “We Love Our Boss!” On the poster, where you would expect to see the boss’s picture, is a bright glowing light instead, and on the cubicle is a picture of Jesus smiling and giving the peace sign. 

Silas snaps back into reality when Paul pushes a bunch of papers out of the way and slams down a form. “Here, fill this out while you’re waiting,” and hands him a pen.  On the pen is the slogan, “Jesus Loves You.”

 Silas adjusts his chair and scans the form. He fills in his name, his parents’ names, and his date of birth-1931.  He pauses at the next question and swallows hard, for he didn’t expect to see the words "date of death!"  Again, reality is brought to the forefront. He gasps,  “That’s right. I truly am dead.”

 Paul shouts over his shoulder, “What’s that? You got a question?” 

Barely above a whisper, Silas answers, “No.” and fills in the date-2024. He scans ahead at the rest of the questions and finds them to be most unusual as well. What religion(s) did you follow? Why did you choose them, or why did you leave them? Were you practicing any form of religion at the time of your death? Have you been a heathen all your life?

Silas scratches his head but, when he sees the next set of questions pertaining to sin, he nearly panics! But before he can react, Silas is aware that a nearby fax machine is delivering a fax. Without turning away from his desk, Paul snatches the paper and accidentally rips off one corner. “Dang-it-all! Where’s that darn tape?” As Paul slaps around the desk and tries to locate the dispenser, Silas sees it on the floor and hands it to him. “Thanks, pal. The filing department would scream blood murder if I sent it down without the corner! Bunch of primadonnas. Forget the form for now. You can finish it later if needs be.” Frowning, Silas worries about the words “needs be.”

Paul picks up a pair of half-readers, tilts his head back and reads the fax. With lips pursed, he murmurs several “Mmm’s” and “Ah-ha’s.”  “So, it says your name is Silas Theodore Townsend, also known as “Saint.” Why’s that?”

 Silas scratches his head and looks to the side. “It’s because of my initials, S.T. Like St.Townsend.

 Paul laughs while shaking his thumb at Silas. “Hey, guys! Guess what? We’ve got us a new apostle!"

 Someone in the back shouts, “I doubt that!” 

 Paul replies, “Leave it to you, Thomas!” 

Thomas snaps, “Blow it out your ear!” 

After the laughter subsides, Paul swipes a tear from the corner of his eye. Still chuckling, he declares, “Alright! Let’s get back to you, shall we? Looks like you’ve got quite the rap sheet. It’s all minor and misdemeanor stuff but, still, I see you used to attend church until you were twelve. Then you quit. You always blamed Father Mose when you turned your back on God. You blamed God for letting him hurt you. Is that right?”

Silas’s face darkens. “Yeah, that’s right. He was a mean old bas..er..bugger and treated all of us kids like we were bugs or something. One day during catechism, he told me I stunk like all poor people do. He went on to say I stunk because my old man was a drunk and drank up all the money so that we couldn’t even buy a bar of soap. Never mind that I was a kid whose mother had died six months earlier. So I left. I blamed God for letting people like him become priests in the first place! God’s supposed to know everything! Didn’t he know his guy was bad news for kids like me, or didn’t He care?”

Paul lifts his eyebrows and tilts his head. “Oh, He cared. We have an old saying, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Father Mose is paying for what he did to God’s children.” Paul waves his arm, and a vision appears before Silas. A man kneeling at an altar wearing a smelly, dirty sackcloth. Head bowed, performing eternal penitance for his cruelty.

“It also says you made a living running crooked games of chance, the old shell game, and three card Monty.” Paul stops and looks up at Silas. “You also sold stolen goods occasionally.  I’m guessing you were a pickpocket”. The Holy Spirit tried to make you see you had to change your ways, but your heart was too hardened by bitterness. We know this because even though you left God, God didn’t leave you. He had the Holy Spirit keeping an eye on you to try to keep you from getting into trouble. He’s filled out a pretty good report on you. Would you care to hear it?”

Silas wipes the sweat from his upper lip. “Shoot.”

Paul smiles. “Okay. It says that although you ran crooked games of chance, you never took advantage of children. One thing you knew was that kids were fascinated by the shell game. So if one of them bet a dime, you would let him win and then would give him a dollar and a lecture. You told them that gambling was the wrong way to make money. They should study hard and get good grades. If they are having trouble understanding, ask the teacher for help. Teachers are there to help you learn. The Spirit notes a number of kids did what you taught them and credit Saint for their success. Then there’s the Christmas thing. Every Christmas, you’d wait for the church to be almost empty to sneak in and remove a name from the Angel tree. Over time, you made seventy children’s Christmas a happy one. And you’ve performed many more acts of kindness for your neighbors. But there is one especially. There was an old blind woman named Harriet Storm. She sat beside a set of steps of the apartment house directly behind you. People feared her because she’d scream at them when they tried to give her something. You later learned it was because her hearing aid was broken, and she couldn’t afford to fix it. She screamed because she was startled and suspicious. You took her hearing aid and paid to have it fixed. Every Thursday, you went across the street to the Deli and bought a pastrami sandwich and a Coke. You’d cut off a small piece for yourself and give the rest to her, saying you were full. In the winter, you persuaded her to come to your cold water flat to escape the cold. She’d sleep on your bed while you slept on the floor. Silas, it goes on and on like this. The Holy Spirit is very detailed in his report. If you don’t mind, I would like to make a phone call.”

Silas shrugs. Looking at the floor, he responds softly, “Okay, I guess.”

Paul flips open his phone and pushes the redial button. “Peter? Hi, it’s Paul. I got your man Townsend down here. What? Yeah, the guy born in Whitinsville Hospital. I just finished reading the Holy Spirit’s report, and it looks to me like the good deeds outweigh the bad. Yeah, I know the Spirit said he talked to him all his life, and Silas never changed. But I’ll tell you, I’ve known church people who never loved their neighbors as much as this guy! He doesn’t have to have a front-row seat, so can you talk to the big guy about getting him in? Yeah, we’ll wait.” Paul winks and points to the picture of Jesus. Seconds later, Paul jumps out of his seat. “He can!?! That’s great! Thanks a lot, Peter. Looks like you’re in!” Paul pushes a button on his desk, and the same angel walks in. Paul rises from his chair and pumps Silas’s hand vigorously. “Welcome to the family! This young lady will escort you to the door.”

Stumbling in a daze, Silas can’t take in all that’s happened. The angel smiles at him as the Enter door glides open. “I knew you would be allowed in. I could tell because you are so nice.” 

Silas smiles and shakes his head. “But we only just met. There’s no way you could know if I’m nice or not.

 “But that’s not true.” The angel says. “We met a long time ago. I’m Harriet Storm!”

Silas’s mouth drops open. “What! Why, you’re one of the reasons I made it in!”  

Silas feels a presence and turns to see Jesus. “That’s not true. Silas, you’re the only reason you made it in. Now I want you two to go and have fun. You might be surprised by some of the people you’ll meet!”

Silas and Harriet stroll into the crowd, laughing and hugging everyone they meet. Silas suddenly stops.  Looking toward the glowing light in the distance, he falls to his knees and shouts,   “Thank you, God.