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time in her womb--she’d joked that I’d kicked her black and blue, and had been a long, painful delivery. I sensed she’d suffered postpartum depression ever since.
    To be honest, my behavior since I’d been weaned had strained our relationship. Stepfather very recently leaving Mother for a younger woman had not perked up her or her prose.
    While I haven’t encountered her in my afterlife surroundings, I know she’s here. Mother preceded me by twenty-two years, victim of a stroke. I expect Mother to be in a burb, not too awfully far from me. Mother and I will connect in The Great Beyond. Time is not of the essence. When we do cross paths, we shall cling and hug and cry. I know we will.
    I suppose I’ll bump into Stepfather too, as chronology is the only demographic I can discern. I don’t anticipate seeing Joes I and II. No ladies in hoop skirts, no men with powdered wigs. Nor folks decked out in loincloths or chain mail or togas.
    According to our busy rumor mill, the afterworld occupies separate levels, partial century by partial century, as if floor by floor in a department store. Housewares on Six, Seventeenth Century on Nine, in that vein. As in Vietnam , the grapevine is proving to be the most reliable media.
    I have to believe these stories, although I am unable to participate in the chitchat.
    And why can’t I?
    Let me back up a bit.
    If your conception of The Great Beyond is running along conventional lines in terms of leadership, forget it. There is no St. Peter pulling sentry duty at any gate, pearly or otherwise. Please be assured, too, that I did not arrive after paddling up the River Styx in a leaky kayak. I simply materialized where I am, wherever that is.
    God? A big, cranky bearded guy in a robe, flinging lightning bolts? Haven’t seen him yet and am not anxious to.
    I’m in a middle-class subdivision on a cul-de-sac. I’m the center home of three, in a split-level identical to the other two, right down to the beige-and-blue paint scheme. I rattle around in what must be eighteen-hundred square feet of space. Our infrastructure can use work. I have lawn and landscaping care that I never see, but they are lousy edgers and miss too many dandelions. My patio sliders stick and there’s peeling paint in the third bedroom.
    My kitchen takes up half the ground level. With its granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and copper cookware hanging above a center island, it’s far too upscale for the neighborhood.
    Food is provided and mysteriously replaced when consumed. If you can call it food. The freezer compartment is crammed with TV dinners. The pantry is floor to ceiling with army MREs and the earlier C-rations which we had when I was in. The Cs include delicacies I’d had to eat such as ham and lima beans and chicken and noodles. The only appliance required for meal preparation is the microwave.
    I have a two-car garage but no car. I have not seen a motor vehicle in The Great Beyond.
    I have cable television with 8,720 channels. All except three are snow and static. I tune in any of the three, and five minutes later I want to throw a chair at the fifty-two-inch HDTV screen.
    Channel 82 is an afternoon talk show that runs endlessly without commercial interruption. It is as banal and excretal as any I’d ever seen. The hosts work in shifts and are all the same. They smile and ask cutting-edge questions that are stupid beyond belief (“How do you feel now that you’re dead?”). There is one topic: Vietnam. Their guests range from U.S. generals to LBJ to Ho Chi Minh to killed veterans of all nations participating to protesting hippies. Never is a conclusion reached.
      Channel 316 is reality TV as foul and moronic as any in The Land of the Living. There is one topic: multiple marriage and divorce. Nobody who is less than a three-time loser qualifies. Serial brides and grooms remarry. The camera follows them everywhere including the bedroom throughout weeks or sometimes days of marital