The 5 People You Meet in Heaven

Malcolm was driving a new car. It was so much more powerful than any car he had driven before. There was a hill on a country road that he usually took at 45 mph, and you had to push the car to get up to that. In the new car, Malcolm managed to keep climbing the hill in 4th gear. Malcolm pressed the accelerator half way down. He looked at the revometer. Exactly 3,500 rpm. That was the way to climb a hill. The car was doing 60. It felt great. At the top of the hill there was a bend that Malcolm had never taken at more than 45. On the bend there was a big tree. The tiny little hatch back plunged into the tree at 60. The next day the newspapers would show a picture of a car that looked like a tin can that had been smashed with a hammer.

Malcolm felt himself flying through what seemed to be the night sky. He was surrounded by clouds of pink and orange smoke.

-- A SCENE FROM MALCOLM’S LIFE ------------------

Karl had brought the radio kit to school. It had a telescopic aerial and an earphone attached. The teacher put the earphone in her ear.
“Have a listen,” she said. “I think it’s got quite a strong signal now.” They all took turns and listened to the radio through the earphone, one at a time. The station could be heard clearly but was quiet.

Malcolm got the same radio kit for his birthday. He worked hard, studying the various different circuits for radios that were in the book, and the circuit for the hearing aid in order to understand the basic principles of an amplifier. Now he combined these circuits, to try and make the radio louder. He invited Karl to the house to see his finished work. Karl was amazed. The radio was driving a loudspeaker really loudly. Malcolm gave him the circuit so that Karl would be able to go home and build the radio himself on his electronic kit.
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Malcolm continued flying at great speed through the swirling mists of pink and orange. He felt himself no longer moving. Malcolm was standing in his bedroom, in the house where he had grown up. The room was full of radio equipment. Karl was there. The radio kit was by the window and was plugged into an aerial that hung over the curtain rail. An old pocket tape recorder sat on top of the kit and blasted out the news from Chinese Radio International, in English.
“That’s not necessarily coming from China,” said Malcolm. “They satellite it over here. Sometimes the Chinese use the old Radio Luxembourg medium wave transmitter. Do you wonder why you can hear Voice of America on 6040 KHZ all day? It comes from Yorkshire.”
“If it came directly from China, I don’t think you’d be able to hear it on one of these things,” said Karl. “Still, very interesting to hear a programme coming from China.” “If you had the internet you could listen to stations thousands of miles away and hear them all clearly,” said Malcolm.
“Where’s the fun in that?” asked Karl. “I’d rather do it the old fashioned way, and make a short wave coil by wrapping it around an old toilet roll centre. Anyone can listen to a radio programme on a computer attached to a telephone line. Real radio takes skill.” Karl turned the pocket tape recorder off. The radio kit was silent. “Now, you’re masterpiece.” He walked over to the big stereo radio. “Pirate radio stations in Ireland and the South East, foreign stations that play English pop records, local radio stations all over the country.” Karl turned the radio on and tuned into the news on Radio Wales.
“Karl, have you ever thought of taking the wire aerial draped over the curtain rail and plugging into the FM aerial socket on the stereo?” Karl did this. He switched the stereo radio to FM. He tuned through lots of stations.
“That’s amazing,” said Karl. “They’re ten times clearer than they were before.”

“Karl, where am I? Am I back in my childhood? Is that what happens to you when you die?”
“No, you’re in Heaven. Except this isn’t your Heaven, it’s my Heaven. We all have to find our own Heaven. Malcolm, you’ve got all the equipment and you know how to set it up. Few people do. So I stay in your bedroom, with these old radios. That’s all I want to do, forever.”
“But you’re a Jehovah’s Witness.”
“And we’re Hell bound, are we? Is your God a tiny deity that presides over your tiny Brethren chapel?”
“No. But how did you get to Heaven? You don’t believe in Jesus. You don’t know him as your Saviour.”
“How do you know I don’t believe in him or know him as my Saviour? I was always taught to answer difficult questions with what I thought were pat answers. If someone finds a part of the Bible that disagrees with what you’re saying, find a part of the Bible that backs you up, hit them with that. But if the Bible is the word of God, why are different people’s interpretations of it so contradictory? Theology is not simply a game of cards, I’ll play this card, I’ve got a better card than you. I had to accept that there were some things about God that I didn’t know. The trinity is a mystery. So is electricity. We don’t know what it is, we only know what it does. The same goes for gravity and magnetism. If we can’t understand such simple physical forces, how can we claim to fully understand God? The trinity and the deity of Christ cause problems, but so does the wave and particle duality of light. If I don’t understand something it doesn’t mean that it’s nonsense. Lots of things are beyond comprehension. This aerial wire you have hanging over the window frame, do you realise it’s the wrong length for VHF?”
“Yes it is, it’s much too long. I spent my whole life trying to reason out how it worked,” said Malcolm.
“It’s a mystery, but it works fantastically,” said Karl. “So is Jesus. So is salvation.”

Malcolm flew off into dark, empty space again, soaring at great speed through the pink and orange clouds.

-- A SCENE FROM MALCOLM’S LIFE ------------------

Malcolm dutifully took his valentine card to Tanya in the university art room. She’d always complain if she didn’t get one, which was strange because she didn’t like Malcolm very much. She didn’t dislike him as a friend but absolutely didn’t fancy him one little bit, which was rather unfortunate because Malcolm liked her as much as anyone could ever like anyone. Fancy was not a strong enough word to describe Malcolm’s feelings for Tanya. Neither was the English word Love. There was a Christian book by C. S. Lewis entitled The Four Loves, describing the four Greek words for love that were used in the New Testament. Malcolm had read it in order to try and understand how he felt about Tanya. “Philadelphia. Yes. I certainly feel brotherly love. Agape. I’d die for her. Perhaps I would. Eros. I certainly feel a little bit of Eros, but it’s held back by the strength of my Christian love for Tanya. Then there’s that other word. It means to like her the way you like strawberries or ice-cream. I certainly feel that. In fact, when I look at Tanya it reminds me of strawberries and ice-cream and I can actually taste something very sweet in my mouth.”

Tanya took her dutifully delivered valentine card. She was standing next to the photocopier as the class were photocopying the writing on some kitchen objects as part of their art projects. Tanya laughed at the valentine card. Malcolm knew she would laugh. Valentine’s Day, Christmas holidays, Tanya’s 21st birthday were all occasions to produce a funny card, take it to the art room, and Malcolm and Tanya would laugh together.

At half past eight every Sunday morning Tanya would unlock the door and let the students into the Common Room in the university residential block for the Sunday morning prayer meeting. Malcolm thought that Tanya was a saint. One of the few Christians in the world who went to prayer meetings. One of the even smaller group of Christians who went to a prayer meeting early on a Sunday morning.

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Malcolm felt himself no longer moving. He was standing in a corridor in the university. This was the corridor where he had once met Tanya, said hello to her, and then felt disappointed when he couldn’t think of anything else to say. A woman came around the corner. Her eyes were like blazing fire and her face shone like the Sun. Malcolm fell down at her feet and said, “Tanya! Tanya, those boots are beautiful. What colour are they?”
“They’re called Burnished Bronze,” said Tanya, in a voice that was soft like a waterfall. Tanya’s face stopped shining. Her eyes no longer blazed like fire. “Malcolm, I don’t really look like this. When you see people in Heaven, they have to take on the image you have of them in your mind, or you’d never recognise them. I’ve started talking in my ordinary voice now.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Is that because everything about me is positively angelic? That’s why your cards were always so funny.”
“Tanya, you’re five years younger than me. When did you die and what did you die of? You didn’t have cancer, did you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t die of a brain tumour?”
“No.”
“I hate the thought of you being killed in a car accident.”
“I died of old age. Malcolm, when I died, I was 93 years old, I was in a quiet room in the hospital, and my children and grandchildren were with me.”
“Praise the Lord! Oh well, at least you married somebody. But I only crashed the car this afternoon.”
“Malcolm, you were killed in a car accident more than 50 years ago. I read about it in the paper.”
“Were you upset?”
“Yes, but not nearly as upset as you would have been if it had happened to me,” said Tanya. Malcolm and Tanya both laughed.
“Quite right,” said Malcolm. “It would have hung over the rest of my life like a dark cloud, even if you had married somebody else.”
“Malcolm, your spirit is moving freely through time and space. Life on Earth is like listening to a cassette on a cheap cassette player you buy in the market. You haven’t got rewind. You haven’t even got a good fast forward. You’re just plodding slowly through it. You couldn’t miss out a track on the tape you didn’t like. Imagine a record player. It has an extra dimension. It has the length and width of the record groove, but it also has height. So it’s easy for the stylus on the record player to jump from one track to another track. In Heaven you’re in the fifth dimension. You can jump from place to place and from time to time.”
“Fascinating.”
“Malcolm, I want to know what it’s like to love somebody, as much as you loved me, without being loved in return. Let’s explore a few more images of me you have in your mind.”

They went into the university shop. In the corner there was a huge statue of Tanya. There was an altar in front of it on which people were lighting candles. There were lots of little dolls that looked like Tanya for sale. Tanya picked up a key ring which had her picture on it and the words, “Our lady of the highway.”
“Would you like one of my key rings?” she asked. “Would you like to put your car keys on this? Oh, Holy Tanya, leader of the Sunday morning prayer meeting, pray for us in Heaven even though you are dead, nobody prays like you. Pray for us as we drive down the M1 on a bank holiday Monday.”

The university shop, and the Madonna of Saint Tanya of the Sunday morning prayer meeting, disappeared. “Now I understand what it’s like to love somebody without being loved in return. You think the Sun shines out of my face, like the Apostle John’s vision of Jesus. You think I am like the Virgin Mary, and am praying all the time for people while I am in Heaven, the Lady of Perpetual Succour. Which of us was the perpetual sucker?”
“Tanya, I was not a sucker. Being your friend at university was a pleasure and a joy, and I’m glad you thought my valentine cards were funny. We both laughed at them, didn’t we?”
“Malcolm, all I did was lead the Sunday morning prayer meeting. I am not some Catholic saint who prays for people who are driving down a dangerous motorway.”
“You led it at half past eight on a Sunday morning. You got up early to do that.”
“I lived upstairs in the same building. I didn’t have to catch the first bus from another town, the way you did. I’m not that holy. You’re happy that I married somebody else. Most guys would be disgusted and angry.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, inside and out, and I didn’t want you to go to waste. I’m glad that somebody enjoyed you.”
“You’re concerned about how I died. Most guys would want me to have died a horrible death.”
“And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Malcolm and Tanya both laughed.
“Tell me Malcolm, did you ever love again?”
“Yes Tanya, I did love again. I’ve got 27 other women who want to ask me the same question. Tanya, did you find your Heaven? Is this Heaven for you?”
“Follow me,” said Tanya. She led Malcolm into the art room. One of the students was photocopying the picture on the front of a cornflakes packet.
“Is that you’re idea of Heaven, photocopying a cornflakes packet?” asked Malcolm.
“We’re artists,” said Tanya, “and we’re working on a huge exhibition for the Baltic Gallery. It’s called Things People Have in Their Kitchens.”

Malcolm zoomed off into space again, soaring at what seemed like supersonic speed through multicoloured clouds in a dark sky.

-- A SCENE FROM MALCOLM’S LIFE ------------------

Huge bags of Christian leaflets had appeared in Malcolm’s porch, untidily shoved through the letter box. Some of them were really offensive. “The soul that is stiff necked will be struck down” – the story of a boy being killed in a train crash after telling his mother that he didn’t believe in the Bible. “Visions from the Edge of Hell” – a dying woman, who had been an unbeliever, saying “There is a Hell!” Her friend offered to pray for her but the woman replied that it was too late. Malcolm suspected who would be responsible for this. He phoned Gary.
“There are rather a lot of Christian leaflets that have shoved through my letterbox,” Malcolm said.
“Dean wanted to throw them away,” said Gary. Dean was a well known evangelist in the city centre, who was always in the local newspaper and on the local radio.
“Some of these are shocking,” said Malcolm. “I wonder if I could be arrested for using these. ‘Visions from the Edge of Hell.’ I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to throw the really terrifying leaflets away, and use the rest of them. I’ll just push them through people’s doors.” Malcolm spent several hours sorting out which leaflets he would actually use. He threw thousands away, and there were still thousands left. It would take a long time to write his address on all these leaflets. Malcolm decided not to bother. In two decades of giving out leaflets with his address on, only 2 people had ever bothered to write to him. Putting his address on the leaflets was a waste of time.

A few weeks later Malcolm was walking down the drive to his house. A group of men were walking past in the street.
“Don’t do it, don’t do it!” shouted one of the men.
“He lives there,” said another.
“I thought you were giving leaflets out. Are you going to Shiremoor again? You travel all around Shiremoor giving leaflets out.”
“I’ve seen him in Tynemouth,” said one of the others. “He travels up and down the whole coast.”

One year Malcolm had made a Christmas card with a gospel message to give to a homeless person. He took it down to Gateshead town centre.
“I want to give a Christmas card to a homeless person,” he said, offering the card to a scruffy middle aged man, who was sitting on a park bench next to his friend.
“How do you know we’re homeless?” asked the man. “Do we look that rough, Bill?” he asked his friend.
“I suppose we do,” said Bill. “Did you mistake us for tramps? We live in those flats up there.” He pointed at the nearby tower block. Malcolm walked into the town square, where some teenagers were standing around.
“What is the real meaning of Christmas?” he asked them. “Is it about Jesus, or is it about presents?”
“It’s about presents,” one of them answered.
“I’m getting an X Box,” said another. Malcolm had dedicated 25 years of his life to being an evangelist in Newcastle and often wondered if he had wasted his time.

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Once again, Malcolm stopped moving. He was standing in the city centre of Newcastle. There was the church where he had sometimes gone for lunchtime mass. It was a peculiar church, with a vicar who believed that all religions, from Islam to Jehovah’s Witnesses to Witchcraft, believed in the same kind of morality and prayer and were stepping stones on a journey that led to faith in Christ. Someone had asked Malcolm once, if you weren’t a Christian, what religion would you be? Malcolm had replied, “Church of England,” thinking of this church. Who wouldn’t want to believe what this vicar believed? But Malcolm didn’t believe it. The door to the church was open, as it always was, regardless of whether lunchtime mass was being said or not. Malcolm entered and sat in a pew behind another man. The man turned around to speak to him.
“Hello,” the man said. “I’ve come to say Thank You.”
“Thank you for what?”
“Thank you for saving my soul. I’m the one person in Newcastle you led to Christ.”
“I wasted 25 years of my life here,” said Malcolm.
“If you invested 25 years of life, and I got eternity in Heaven, I’d say that’s a pretty good return on your investment.”
“This lifeless city centre. This dead church.”
“Hey, I joined this church. The vicar still preaches Christ, you know. What he believes about other religions does my head in, but he does still talk about salvation, real salvation, which is found in Christ. If it hadn’t been for that leaflet you stuck in my hand here, I’d be a baked potato in Lucifer’s bonfire.”
“I had the opportunity to join Operation Mobilisation. I could have been a proper missionary. I could have travelled the world.”
“I’m rather glad that you didn’t.”
“I could have led hundreds of people to Christ.”
“And I would have gone to Hell. No one else ever told me about God. You can’t base a decision like that on statistics. I came to say thank you. The name’s Phil, by the way.”
“Phil, is this your Heaven?”
“No, Malcolm. The underground station across the road is where I’m catching a train to the airport. I’m flying to Africa. My Heaven is a little village in the mountains where I live on a farm. Malcolm, I did become a missionary. I did travel the world. I led thousands of people to Christ. All because of the leaflet you put in my hand.”
“When I inquired about doing a training course to be a missionary with Operation Mobilisation, I felt God directing me to come back here. Perhaps he just wanted me to meet you, Phil.”

Malcolm zoomed off into the pink and orange smoke again, travelling at supersonic speed through what seemed like the night sky.

-- A SCENE FROM MALCOLM’S LIFE ------------------

Malcolm was at church on Sunday morning. He was 16 years old.
“Are you staying on at school?” asked the man in a suit.
“No.”
“What do you mean no? There’s fat chance of getting a job, isn’t there?”
“I’m considering going to college.”
“Surely you’ve got more chance! You waste half your time at college. You’re going to stay on at school and do you’re A levels. I don’t want any excuses.”

A few days later Malcolm was sitting in the head teacher’s office. He had dutifully brought back all his remaining school books and had the form ready which the headmaster was supposed to sign before somebody could leave school.
“Please Sir, I’ve brought back these books, and I want you to sign the School Leavers’ Form.”
“What is the name and address of the company that is going to give you a job?”
“I’m going to apply to do the Youth Training Scheme.” The head teacher exploded.
“Lisle, you’re a fool! I want you to go and see the heads of the school departments. I want you to come back here on Thursday and tell me which A levels you want to do, and if you still want to leave school on Thursday, I want you to come back here and tell me why.”

4 months later Malcolm was in the Head Teacher’s office again.
“You have been given your exam results, haven’t you?” asked the Head Teacher. This time he was very calm.
“Yes Sir.”
“We’re not going to let you do Biology, because you’ve got no chance of passing it at all. But the English teachers think you might get you’re A level in English if you really work at it.”

A year and a half later the A level results came. Malcolm stood next to the door mat at home beside his mother. He opened the envelope. “Mam, I’ve got an F.” Malcolm had sat one A level and failed it. He went back to the school and saw the Head of English.
“You should pass if you resit,” said the teacher. “Most of my students go up a couple of grades if they take the exam a second time.” For 3 months the teacher gave Malcolm homework, marked it, and wrote comments on it. Malcolm worked diligently, reading all the books from cover to cover, 7 times each, and trying to get his head around the difficult A level questions. In November he sat the exam again. He got an E. At least he had passed. His sister said, “You’re very lucky the teacher let you resit that exam. My boyfriend’s teacher wouldn’t let him resit A level biology because he was the only one who wanted to do it.” Malcolm’s teacher had been a Christian. He privately said to himself that if he met that teacher in Heaven he would thank him for letting him take the exam again.

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Malcolm continued shooting through the pink and orange smoke that seemed to fill the night sky, if it was night and if this was the sky. He felt himself stop moving. He was in the school library. Sitting behind the desk was the head of English.
“Hello Malcolm,” he said.
“Hello Mr. Davidson. I always said that if I met you in Heaven I’d thank you for letting me take that A level English exam a second time.”
“Now’s your chance. I understand you found the A level in English very useful.” There was an old fashioned desktop computer on the teacher’s desk. “There’s a website for people who write short stories called ABC Tales and there’s somebody on it called mallisle. Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m very impressed by the quality of the stories you’re writing here. I think some of the things you learnt from your A level in English are coming through. You’re characters are well thought out, and they communicate well. Well done, Malcolm. You made it as a writer.”
“I never became famous. I never made any money.”
“Not all writers do, Malcolm. Have a look at all the books around this library. It contains all the classical works of English literature. How many of these people have you ever heard of? Very few. You’ve had your work published on the UK and in America on several websites, and you used to send tapes to a church in Africa. You’ve achieved something significant. How did you get through university if you didn’t do especially well at school?”
“I went to college.”
“Just like that man in the suit at church told you not to, because you would waste so much of your time?”
“Yes. When I took that A level the second time I learnt how to really push myself. I did really well at college. I was delighted when I got a place on a degree course to study Electronics. It’s just a pity I never got a job in Electronics.”
“Where did you get a job, Malcolm?”
“Years later, a friend advised me to do a course in energy certificates for new buildings. That was the first steady job I ever had.”
“How would you have managed that without the discipline you learned at university? Malcolm, you feel as if so many years of your life have been wasted. They weren’t wasted. You must learn to see things through the father’s eyes.”

-- A SCENE FROM MALCOLM’S LIFE ------------------

Malcolm’s friend had had his car stolen. His friend was explaining how it had happened.
“I noticed the car wasn’t outside the house. I called the police. The policeman said, ‘I can see your car on the CCTV camera. It’s on fire.’ Then a policeman came to the house. He held a file in his hand. He asked, ‘Is that your address, 32 Waterloo Road?’ I said, ‘No, I live at 22 Waterloo Road.’ He said, ‘I must have the wrong file, then.’ He was trying to tell me that the car was stolen by somebody else on the same street, although he wasn’t allowed to say that.”

A year later, Malcolm was reading the Jesus Army magazine and saw that another friend who used to belong to his church had started holding a Jesus Army meeting in Newcastle. It was just around the corner from Waterloo Road. Malcolm wanted to go, but was afraid to park his car there in case it was stolen and set on fire.

Malcolm met a man at church.
“I go to the Jesus Army meeting in Newcastle,” the man said.
“I would go but I’m afraid to park the car there. My friend’s car was stolen and set on fire just around the corner.”
“You can lock your car in the paddock.” Malcolm started attending the meeting and the leader always locked Malcolm’s car in the paddock beside his own car. Years later, Malcolm realised that there was only room for 2 cars in that paddock. Everybody else parked in the street. He was very lucky to have had that parking space in the paddock, and would never have attended the meeting or become a member of the Jesus Army without it. A year later the man who had introduced Malcolm to the Jesus Army left it and stopped attending the meeting. Malcolm never saw him again.

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Malcolm soared, at what seemed supersonic speed, through the darkness and the clouds of smoke. Again, he felt himself stop moving. He was standing outside Durham Cathedral. He thought the cathedral was beautiful. He had been there for its nine hundredth anniversary. Excited by the ancient ecclesiastical building, Malcolm went inside. He opened a door and stood in a room where a priest had donned his ecclesiastical robes before mass 900 years before. He looked at the baptismal font, and imagined somebody christening a baby in the twelfth century. There was the friend from church who had told him he could put his car in the paddock at the Jesus Army meeting.
“Hello Craig,” said Malcolm.
“Hello Malcolm. I introduced you to the Jesus Army.”
“You didn’t stay in it for very long, did you?”
“I came here. This beautiful cathedral. I married the girl who I made pregnant. We worshipped at this cathedral for fifty years.”
“I’m just getting used to the fact that I’ve been dead for fifty years,” said Malcolm.
“You’ve been dead for a hundred years. Look at the advent calendar on the wall.” Malcolm looked at it. “It’s 2120.”
“Is it? Craig, are we really here or is this just a dream world?”
“We are really here. We’re dead, so other people can’t see us. Dead people move freely through space and time. It’s got something to do with the fifth dimension. I don’t understand it myself. But all of the places you see are real places, and you are really there.”
“When I saw my teacher sitting in the school library, is he really sitting in the school library next to a real computer?”
“Yes, except he’s probably there in 2012 or something. We lived through some fantastic times here, Lesley and me. The Great Awakening happened in 2040.”
“I didn’t live to see the Great Awakening. I would have been in my seventies, but I would still have been a part of it.”
“Malcolm, if it hadn’t been for people like you keeping the churches going when things were really bad, this cathedral would have become a museum. There would have been no Great Awakening. It was fantastic. Hundreds of people were praying on the grass. Not church members, ordinary people. Sometimes just tourists who came to Durham for the day, and found themselves crying when they came to see the cathedral and realised how unworthy they were of Heaven. You had to pray with them and tell them that God could forgive them. So many of them became vicars. No shortage of vicars any more after 2040.”
“How long did it last?”
“That kind of revival can’t last forever but the church is still growing. Hundreds of people come to an all night prayer meeting on New Year’s Eve. That keeps things alive. This is my Heaven. This beautiful cathedral, where I was always so happy.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“She’s somewhere else. Like Jesus said, there’s no marriage in Heaven.”
“He also said there would be no more sorrow or pain.” They both laughed.
“That’s what I always liked about you, Malcolm, your sense of humour. Malcolm, you’ve met all the people you need to meet today, I mean, this century, and now you need to find your own Heaven.”

Immediately Malcolm shot off into the pink and orange smoke that filled the sky. When he stopped moving this time he was back at his school. He was in a school disco. A song played loudly over the speakers in the hall.
“When you’re in love, you know you’re in love, no matter what you try to do.
You might as well resign yourself to what you’re going through.
If you’re a hard man, or if you’re a child, it still might get to you.
Don’t kid yourself you’ve seen it all before,
A million mouths have said that too.” Some girls walked up to Malcolm. They were dressed as animals.
“Do you like our costumes, Malcolm?” one of them asked. “What do you think we are?” Another girl dragged Malcolm away.
“Are you jealous?” Malcolm asked.
“I was knocked down by a motorbike on the main road outside a year before you came to this school.”
“I remember,” said Malcolm. “It was on the news.”
“You’re a sensitive man,” said the girl. “I remember you bursting into tears when the headmaster talked about me in the school assembly.”
“I was soft when I was fourteen.”
“Soft? I think you had a perfectly good right to burst into tears when you were told about me. You’re concerned about people in your community that you don’t know personally. I wish everyone was like you.”
“That motorcyclist was travelling at 60 or 70 miles an hour.”
“So were you Malcolm. You killed someone as well, in the same way. You killed yourself in a similar accident. Please don’t get angry with that motorcyclist on account of me. We’re in Heaven. We’re not allowed to hate anybody. I’m just here to tell you something. I’ve made myself invisible. Those girls know me, and I don’t want to upset them by letting them see me. I’m supposed to be dead. Those girls are alive, they’re in 1982. You’re not going to die for another 38 years. They can see you. You’re their friend. So be their friend and dance with them again. This is your Heaven.”