Late of Heaven

It was a monastic start to the day for Stanley Jesseps. A cup of fresh-brewed coffee, a slice of buttered toast, a banana, and on the kitchen-table lay the small white To-Do pad that called him to action, invited him to seize pieces of the day. Sometimes he might append a new task that occurs to him during the morning’s repose, but on this Wednesday he rolled with the prior-night’s draft, prescribed moments of meaning amidst the dross of an old and bereaved man’s life. It is an orderly approach to living he thought, the cadence of the day established in advance, though he couldn't help feeling that neither the tasks nor the dross could really save him from the darker thoughts and yearnings that tormented him.  

Completed tasks intersected with times and places and were recorded with their memorialization on the pad at lunch (tick), in the car (tick tick) and at dinner (tick tick tick). Thoughts of Beth, triggered by small things sometimes overwhelmed Stanley who would simply stop and stare at nothing in particular for a few moments, but this Wednesday went by without diversion; six tick marks for the six tasks. He tore the completed list from the pad, crumpled up the page and threw it in the waste container in the corner of the kitchen, next to the dresser he’d bought for Beth many years ago.  

After dinner, Stanley wrote a new list, drawing one day’s activity to a close and preparing for the next. As he squared the list away on the kitchen table, he gave it the professional consideration of the corporate Vice President that he had once been; the man that oversaw strategic programs that spawned projects, projects that required plans, plans that spurred action, action that yielded measurable results.  Retirement had shrunk this world, reducing the number of people in his orbit. Tasks of great magnitude, once prioritized by urgency and importance and described in the language of business, had given way to this single to-do list, a dull, monolithic thing made up of small matters thrust cyclically upon him by family, friends and small-town institutions. The list became an end in and of itself, the tasks subservient to the role they played in occupying his time. 

That night Stanley’s sleep was unusually troubled, not by the phantasm of Beth, but by a mad chatter centered on a world in which actions preceded thoughts, outcomes preceded their causes, death preceded life. Amidst the churn, he momentarily trapped a big idea that contained and straightened out this nonsense, and he resolved to tell Beth about it in the morning, but the will is weakest in the small hours and judgement most clouded, and at daybreak the wisdom was beyond reach, and Beth was still dead. 

On Thursday morning there appeared an errant tick mark against an item that he hadn’t planned for, and certainly hadn’t accomplished. in all-caps: BOOK AN APPOINTMENT WITH UROLOGY. Certainly, this was something that he’d been thinking about for six months or more, from the happy time before Beth’s death, but he had also intentionally avoided the subject for fear of being drawn into the medical system. The system that had been unable to save Beth. 

Forgetfulness was possible, he supposed, but he decided to investigate.

“I am phoning to make an appointment for next week with Doctor Keppler”, said Stanley to the Urology office receptionist, Francine, “I was referred by my doctor at Stroud General. Last year we detected traces of blood in my urine. He suggested I get a scan and book an appointment with you”. Stanley was fishing for information.

“That’s totally fine, Mr Jesseps, but you booked the appointment only yesterday”, said Francine. Stanley detected a practiced patience in her manner. Mostly she dealt with elderly men, he could tell.

“That doesn’t seem possible, I was busy with other things all day. That’s why I am calling you now”, Stanley replied.

“Well, that’s as may be, but it looks like you – or someone – spoke to Kathy or me yesterday and we got it done”, sympathized Francine, “Dr Keppler looks forward to seeing you… on June 15th at 2.00pm”.

Stanley concluded the phone call with Francine, but he was uneasy. Obviously, he’d called the doctor’s office the prior day and made the appointment, but how could he have forgotten something so front of mind? Curious, he retrieved Wednesday’s crumpled to-do list from the waste basket, smoothed it out, and re-ran the six to-dos of the prior day – basement shelves (tick), fixed washer/dryer lock (tick), refill the diesel can (tick), relocate the semper vivum (tick), pay the water bill (tick), challenge Gensler’s insurance premium (tick). A day of metronomic precision that he remembered quite well, and – for sure – he did NOT call the Doctor, something that would have merited purposeful inclusion on that list, on that or any other day. 

On Thursday afternoon, Stanley made an overdue call to his youngest daughter, Clara, living somewhere outside Los Angeles, a continent away. It was one of the day’s to-dos.

“Your to-do lists are an obsession”, said Clara without sympathy. “When we were young children, we would find your discarded lists in the trash. I would draw squiggles on them, Gina would insert imagined tasks that involved us in your life. You always seemed to be doing something more important, somewhere else, involving other people, and your lists never seemed to include us. Gina and me, we resented them”.  

Stanley felt a familiar fog enter his mind as he tried to remember their childhood and his role in it. Beth, his wife, would often complain that he was never there for the hard stuff: tantrums, fevers, sports-meets, homework assignments.  

“But I try to spend time doing things for you. Every day. I am always here for you and Gina, even if I wasn’t so attentive before”, he replied.

“I know dad. I know that you are doing the best you can do, and you weren’t so bad, just absent. But now you need to just stop the manic stuff. It’s crazy how much you get done and how little satisfaction you get from it”, she stopped for a moment “…and how little it matters to anyone else”, she added perhaps unnecessarily.

“I love you, but your mind has been colonized”, she said.

“What does that even mean?” Stanley asked.

“Love you Dad”.

The call ended and Stanley felt very tired, and he missed Beth with an aching heart. It was just over three months since her sudden death. An undetected brain tumor, irrational behavior, failure of memory, and over the course of one unbearable February week her light faded and then extinguished. A quick death they said, painless they said. It was all so abrupt, the funeral so rushed, that Stanley imagines in unguarded moments that his wife still walks the earth, but in some interrupted state. 

Stanley called his older daughter, seeking a second opinion.

What exactly do you talk to your therapist about?” asked Gina, changing the subject away from the abhorrent lists.

“Truths from an alternative reality, like watching the life of a coral reef through the bottom of a glass-hulled boat”, said Stanley.

“Can you be a bit more specific?”, asked Gina, irritated. She reminded Stanley of her qualifications as a licensed social worker. “Do you explore your feelings? Dies he give you exercises to do?”.

“Oh I try not to get too personal, nor take on additional load”, Stanley glibly replied, though truthfully.

“That’s not therapy” said Gina, “that’s just bullshit. Has he steered you toward meditation?”

“Some people can sit quietly, alone and contented in a room, others cannot. It’s like being color blind or having perfect pitch. You can either do it, or you cannot”, said Stanley somewhat pompously.

“Well, that’s bullshit too”, said Gina. “..and these lists… they are not helpful”.

Stanley suspected that his daughters talked about him behind his back.

That night sleep proved elusive again, a tumult, disturbed by lists of unknowable and undone things, of unspecific threats from intangible forces, hidden hands, instructions from a dark unseen omniscience seemed to be seeking out a recipient. Beth figured in the dream, not embodied, but as a roiling noisy tempest that smashed things.

He awoke anxious and unsettled, hardly rested at all and in this state of mind he approached the To-Do list with some trepidation. A new item had appeared on the list: “LATE OF HEAVEN”.  All-Caps again. 

This made no sense at all and sent Stanley deeper into a funk. The list felt contaminated.

Gina came to visit on a pretext, he didn't initially pay attention, and she didn't really elaborate, but she was cheery, pragmatic, washed the dishes, opened the windows. Stanley sensed a scarcely concealed motive; he was being observed quite closely, being professionally evaluated by his daughter.

She grabbed the list from him and examined it with interest. “Perhaps it describes mom as ‘elated of heaven’, or it's an exhortation to ‘be late to heaven’, said Gina constructively. The latter did seem to jibe with instructions to see the Urologist.

Stanley sighed, seemed reluctant to speak. “I googled it” said Stanley, “’Lathe of heaven’ came up on the search”. He seemed reluctant to continue, but Gina intrigued, urged him on. 

“It’s a Sci-Fi book about a man that creates new realities through his dreams while under the control of his therapist”. He sounded ridiculous. 

Gina was momentarily distracted by a small childish doodle in the lower left corner. She was also struck by the similarity of her father's handwriting to that of her own. She must have copied his style when she was younger, but she couldn’t quite remember.

“Well, it’s been written with your pen”, said Gina gathering back momentum, “it sure looks like you are the author”, she said, holding her hands out in a way that invited Stanley to offer up alternative explanations, but he sat there in morose silence in front of his sullied list. Gina then sat with him.

“My therapist agrees with you and Clara. He thinks I need to cease with the continuous activity. He thinks it's a massive distraction. Just be in the moment. Being, not doing; that kind of thing”, said Stanley. 

“Maybe he’s right”, said Gina.

“Maybe he is right, but ‘being’ is not what makes us human”, said Stanley. “We can imagine things that do not yet exist, and we can make them real through action”, said Stanley, “not through stupid dreams” he added. He hoped that he was being coherent, making sense, alleviating Gina’s concerns about his mental state. He really didn't need her to worry about him.

“Well, I suppose you can choose action”, said Gina, playing along, “but if that is true, then you can also choose its opposite, inaction”. She sat down at the table and gently pushed the to-do list to the side, hoping to diminish its salience.

They sat quietly together in the kitchen enjoying the early summer breeze that was wafting in through the open windows, the first time they’d been opened in months, since before Beth’s death. Dust motes, caught in a shaft of sunlight, sparkled against a shadowy background.

“I miss Beth terribly”, said Stanley.

“I know”, said Gina, catching her breath.

“And I miss you and Clara too. I wish I’d been there for you”, said Stanley, choking on his words. He seemed older, defeated and though she resisted, Gina could feel his vitality ebb, foresee his mortal end.

“Well, you’re here now”, she said.