After Life Conventions

Jerry died during the wintertime. He was a man like any other man and he was a sinner like every other man. He did not really have a family but he was not entirely alone either. His funeral was attended by his coworkers and friends all of whom spoke a few words about the kind of man he was.

Now, funerals were a bit different than they were long ago. People learned a bit from literature, about the perils of romanticizing the past. When words were said at a funeral, they honored the whole life, faults included. Every memory that was bad and good, every accomplishment and failure.

In this way, Jerry was honored. It was discovered that he was unfaithful to a number of women and had an unhealthy obsession with cake (which may have been a large contributor to his untimely demise). He cheated on his taxes and never really had a goldfish named Craig. He did enjoy the occasional drink but never did a single illegal act. He enjoyed the beach for numerous reasons and always wanted to move upstate but never had the courage.

For every wrong he committed, there was forgiveness. For what else is there to give the dead? Is it not easier to forgive someone that you know will never commit such an act again?

Jerry’s tombstone was white, almost unnoticeable in the snow covered cemetery. There were stones, in fact obelisks in some places that held ancient testaments to the interred remains of souls that had passed on. But that was in the past, when death was unequal. Economy determined whose death was memorialized by a statue or decorated stone. Thousands of soldiers were placed in identical graves while some bodies were never even buried.

Times changed so that every funeral had the same result: an engraved white square.

Every death the same leads to every life treated equal, which is what people fought over for centuries upon centuries.
So Jerry was remembered and then abandoned in the cemetery. His soul was left to wander amidst the graves. He didn’t quite understand why there was no heaven and why he was still walking around in some spectral form.

He found out very quickly that he could not leave the cemetery and he heard whispering every time he walked over a grave. On one night, Jerry was visited by one of his friends who brought some flowers to place by his tombstone.

“Janice!” Jerry shouted into her ear as she knelt down on the cold snow. But Janice did not hear him.

He shouted louder, stamping his feet and clenching his fists as if he were a child throwing a tantrum. He finally ran out of energy and just stood there.

“I wish you could hear me, Janice. I wish someone would tell me what’s wrong, tell me what to do.” He placed a hand on her face but she did not feel a thing except for the chilly wind that was sweeping the snow from the tall oaks and sending small cold missiles down at her.

Jerry tried to push Janice at one point but it was as if he had no strength.

The wind blew again, knocking down more clumps of snow, and Janice said a quick goodbye and fled back to her warm car and left the cemetery. She never heard the lamenting howls of sorrow that echoed across the spectral plane, unheard by any living thing.

So Jerry sat on his grave where there were no whispers for the rest of the week, untouched by the cold. He received no other visitors and on the seventh day, he hardly noticed the dark shape picking its way through the white stones, making its way steadily toward him. He looked up at the last moment to see a hand reaching toward him and then everything went black.
He awoke to find himself sitting at a table. At first he could not hear anything, but then there was a soft buzz that became a swarm of voices over time. He was seated at a small table with three other occupants. They were in an office presentation room that was ten times larger than any he had been in before.

“Where am I?” asked the person to his left, looking straight at Jerry as if he held all the answers and was to blame.
“You... can see me?” Jerry asked tentatively, his whole being tense with anticipation.

“Wait. You heard me?” the man responded, as if surprised he had even asked a question let alone received some sort of response. All at once the swarming buzz became a clamor and Jerry looked around to see equally shocked expressions on everyone’s faces.

“Quiet down everyone,” a voice rang out via sound system and the room hushed immediately. It was another man standing at the podium wearing a very fashionable suit. He tapped at the microphone once or twice before proceeding.
“The answer to all of your questions is yes. Yes, you are all dead. Yes, you are all ghosts. And this,”—he spread out his arms—“is purgatory.”

Another rise in the buzz of the audience was hushed again with simply an upraised hand. The man at the podium oozed confidence and control, but there was also a soft side that seeped from his smile that told Jerry he cared.
“You all are the unlucky few who for reasons undisclosed will have to wait before having the option of moving on. You will have the choice of activities to be sure. You can wait in the activity filled waiting room or return to earth where you will be freed of your funereal constricts to roam the earth, along with a few other options.” He pointed to a set of lavish doors that were on either side of the stage, each cleverly labeled ‘Waiting Room’ and ‘Earth’. Jerry swore the doors had not been there before.

“But first, we must continue on with the convention and you must go over the well-prepared pamphlet in front of you.” In front of every single person was a hundred-fifty page packet titled somewhat extensively:

“Now That You’re a Ghost, Here’s What To Do In The Meantime.”

WC 994