Heaven
II.I.IV
HEAVEN
2021 was quite the dark and grim year for me. Apart from the countless dead bodies I had certified on the job, entire branches of our family tree seemed to be dropping at any point in time. And somehow, throughout my three months in Gozo, this only seemed to escalate.
Over the previous year, we had lost our grandpa, an aunt, two great-aunts, a cousin, and two cousins twice removed. Two to COVID, two to cancer, two to complications from existing medical conditions, and one to a freak accident. Whilst in Gozo, I got a call from my very distraught mother, telling me her mum had finally succumbed to bladder cancer. That’s eight deaths in one year – kinda spooky, no? I for one couldn’t quite give less of a damn. Mostly cause by that point, I was so detached from my family that they might as well have been strangers. Also, I had gotten so desensitised to death that it seemed like nothing more than a natural process, and there was no room for grief.
I can’t quite say the same about the death of my beloved dog, Kiba, a few months earlier. We had gotten this giant, brown, goofy, funny pit bull as a two-week-old pup.
I can still remember his adorable lil paws, his giant flappy ears, and that thin sliver of black underneath his lower lip that always made his puppy dog eyes work a thousand times better when he’d want cuddles, or play, or food. He grew up to be this lively, friendly, hyperactive beast who was always up to no good, but loyal to the bone.
Throughout his entire life, my mum made sure to force-feed him anything he’d sniff at, thinking his morbid obesity was something cute and somewhat funny. And so, I wasn’t quite surprised when Kiba died. I was, however, furious. While I was sleeping, he passed a large amount of bloody stool. My mum and brother took him to the vet and they put him down immediately, without me knowing. “I didn’t want to wake you up before going to work!” was her only explanation.
I hated her so much. She ruined my grieving experience. She tainted it with anger. I was supposed to be a wreck, not a seething bowl of rage. That said, this was the first time in ages that I actually felt something. Death could still get to me. I wasn’t as emotionally stunted and desensitised as I thought I was.
When we first got Kiba, his youthfulness helped Sheila take up the role of an adoptive mum. And Sheila? Sheila is a half-Dalmatian, half-Fox Terrier mix, and she’s as cute as a button – in a very lady-like way. We found her roaming the streets in our neighbourhood looking for food and shelter. She looked like a walking skeleton, protruding ribs and all. You can imagine the look in her eyes when we took her in, gave her a good old wash, and wrapped her in a blanket with food right in front of her black snout.
We had never had a dog before then, so my brother and I were really excited about it – much to my parents’ initial disapproval. “Who’s gonna take care of her?!”, “You know those things carry diseases, right?”, “Who’s gonna clean up all the dog hair and the dog crap and the – bla, bla, bla.” And so we tried to reach a compromise. We’d take her to my father’s field and visit her every single day.
Only during her first night away, a thunderstorm struck. My mum practically ran to the field, only to find her shivering in the cold, sheltered from the rain, but still pretty traumatised. She came back with her drenched to the bone, swearing she’d never let her out of sight ever again. As did we all. I spent hours on end just petting her head, telling her everything was gonna be fine and that we’d take really good care of her. My father was still a bit reluctant, but a few days later she was practically his baby. And so, we got our first dog. A staple in our family. And man was she loved.
I know when you have kids you shouldn’t have favourites. Well, I don’t have kids, so that makes it pretty easy for me. But I do have dogs. Correction, I did have dogs.
You’re not supposed to have favourites. But she was mine. Sheila was the one thing I ever loved unconditionally. She was one of the few remaining ties to my dad. And now she too was gone.
Whilst I was in Gozo, a few miles away from home, stuck at work, my mum called to tell me they were gonna put her to sleep. She’d had a stroke the previous month and was left paralysed on her left side. The vet was optimistic, saying she seemed to be doing well and that we might even consider physiotherapy if she kept it up. But as it turns out, she wasn’t. She was deteriorating rapidly, her breathing fast and shallow, whimpering, her eyes all watery. I tried to keep it together on the phone, hearing her moan in the background. I agreed with the decision and gave them my blessing, knowing I’d never get to say goodbye to the one thing I’d ever loved the most. All the while, I kept on picturing this scene from Grey’s Anatomy when Meredith and Derek put their dog to sleep.
As idiotic as it might sound, especially to anyone who’s never had a canine best friend, her death wrecked me with grief. I hadn’t felt such a loss since my dad’s. The others were nothing but a blip on my radar, something I’d get over in a heartbeat. But Sheila’s wasn’t one of them. Her passing was a harbinger of something deeper – the cruel passage of time.
Just like that, another important piece of my life had faded away into nothingness. I was never one to take life for granted, especially after seeing so many dying patients, but for the first time in my life, I wished there was something more to life.
You see, I don’t believe in heaven. Never did and probably never will. Even when I used to believe in something more, I never believed in heaven. It always sounded way too good to be true, and if life has taught me one thing, it’s that it’s unfair. People who go out of their way to be good end up with the short end of the stick more often than not, even though we’re told that good deeds shall go rewarded. So I never really entertained the idea of this perpetual state of bliss.
I think the afterlife is an entirely made-up concept. I don’t have any proof, but being the empiricist that I am, I’m pretty certain there’s nothing that awaits us after death. When we die and the brain irreversibly stops functioning, our thoughts come to an end. “I think, therefore I am” goes the famous dictum of René Descartes. You stop thinking, you stop existing – or at least, that’s how it feels to me. Death isn’t a neat on-off switch, but once the system fails for good, whatever we are dissolves with it. The complex configuration of neurons that makes up everything we are – our faculties, our memories, our experiences – breaks down. And the atoms and molecules that make up those neurons, and every cell in our bodies, are recycled back into the world. But they don’t store memories or experiences. They’re just molecules. And so, that person ceases to exist.
Or at least, that’s what the scientist in me believes. But oddly enough, the second my mum told me they had put her down, I couldn’t help but picture my dad in heaven, with Sheila and Kiba by his side. Just the idea of it made me smile. I’m still very conscious of the fact that this is probably nothing more than an illusion, but I have to admit it’s one that fills me with a comfort unlike any other.
As much of a cynic as I am, I want to believe in heaven. I want to believe that someday, somehow, I’ll get to see them again. My dad, my dog, my patients… Maybe one day I’ll get to chat with Mr Spaceman again, who knows?