Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [37]
The nurse said softly, “Stay as long as you like, Mr. Warren, I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”
After she left, and he heard the door close, he put his head down on the side of the bed, still holding her hand, and sobbed like a baby. He looked over at her and wondered where she had gone. Where had that sweet woman gone?
Where She Had Gone
As soon as her sister Ida threw open the doors at the end of the hall, what Elner saw was so stunning, so dazzling, it almost took her breath away. Standing before her was a set of sparkling crystal stairs leading straight up into the sky, all the way up to the big round moon at the very top.
Elner turned to Ida with tears in her eyes. “Oh, Ida, it’s prettier than I could have ever imagined.”
“I thought you’d be impressed,” said Ida.
It wasn’t until after they had started their journey up the stairs that Elner noticed Ida was carrying a purse. She thought, “Only Ida would bring her purse with her to heaven,” and she laughed out loud.
Ida asked, “What’s so funny?”
Elner said, “Nothing, I was just thinking about something, that’s all.”
Norma had been the one who had put Ida’s purse into the coffin with her, because she said her mother had said a woman was never fully dressed without her purse. She started to tell Ida that it had been Norma’s idea but changed her mind; any mention of the coffin and Ida might bring up Tot Whooten again.
After they had been climbing up the stairs for a while, the sky suddenly began to grow a darker and darker, almost midnight blue; soon hundreds of tiny little stars started appearing and began twinkling all around them everywhere, above their heads, even under the stairs. It couldn’t have pleased Elner more. She had always wondered what it would be like to walk around in the sky among the stars, and now she knew. A lot of fun.
As they went farther up the stairs, the big moon at the top seemed to grow larger and started turning a creamy yellow and gold color, and began glowing in the dark like a billion lightning bugs. It was a long climb but Elner was surprised at how easy it was, and remarked to Ida, “You’d think climbing all these stairs would wear me out, but I don’t feel one bit winded.” As they got closer to the moon it changed colors again and started turning from gold into a bright glossy white, and then just when they reached the top step, suddenly right before their eyes, the moon turned into a big, round shiny mother-of-pearl button.
“Ohh, interesting,” said Elner. At that moment, as they stepped on the last step, an archway in the middle of the button opened up. When Ida and Elner stepped inside, the sun was bright and shining, and it was daytime again. Elner stood there for a moment and looked at what she figured must be heaven. It was not all white clouds and angels flying around as she had expected, but lovely. As a matter of fact, Elner thought it looked a lot like the big botanic garden in Kansas City, where Ida had taken her many times. The grass was deep green and lush, with highly colored flowers blooming everywhere.
Ida said, “Well?”
“Very nice,” she said, and when she looked up she noticed that the sky was not one solid color, like it was at home. Here it was more iridescent. She held out her hand and the colors of the sky sparkled on her skin in pinks and blues and soft greens.
“This is just like walking inside a rainbow, isn’t it, Ida? Hey, remember when that woman wrote in to the Neighbor Dorothy radio show and said how she and her family stood in a rainbow…Now I know just how she felt.”
As they walked along, Elner thought of something else. “Hey, Ida, now am I going to get to know all of life’s mysteries? Don’t they say that when you are dead, that all will be revealed?”
“I really can’t say, Elner, I’m just an escort. The rest you will have to find out on