More Things in Heaven
Mary must be changed if she is to ascend.
By R H Wesley
For Mary, Mia, and Maryann
A woman died. Her name was Mary.
“Mary… that’s my name, I think. I can’t see anything.”
You are in a state of transition. Your faculties may not work the way you remember.
“Who is that? Are you God?”
Not quite. You can call me Peter.
“Peter! Saint Peter? Oh, I remember now. I knew my faith would carry me!”
There was a man named Peter, later a saint. But I am not him; some vestige of that man remains, but I am beyond it. I am Saint Peter as much as Mary is the mother of God.
“I don’t understand—are we not at the gates of Heaven?”
Do not worry; I will do my best to help you comprehend this process. There was a woman named Mary. Not the virgin, but a woman who lived and died nearly two thousand years later. Now she has been chosen to ascend. But Mary cannot enter as she is. To ascend she must change. Become something else. Transform.
“Change? Why must I change?”
As Mary is now, she cannot understand. But that is the point of changing. Now tell me, what can you remember of Mary’s life?
“It’s all flashes and pieces. I remember the end. I remember there being pain. Cancer. And my sister was with me. It’s coming back slowly.”
Do you remember Mary’s husband? His name was also Peter.
“Yes, but he wasn’t there. He died a long time ago. And I hadn’t seen him in years. I can’t recall right now what it was that made him leave. Wait—will I meet him here?”
He has ascended. He went through this same process. In some sense, I am him.
“He’s fuzzy. It’s been so long, I can’t make out his face. And I can’t see yours at all. Does your voice sound like his? I’m not sure if I’m even hearing your words.”
I assure you, Mary is hearing what she must. Soon we will begin her process of transition. I will tell Mary stories.
“Stories? Like parables? That’s how I get to heaven?”
Yes. These are Mary’s. She walks along the edge of an endless ocean. My words will help her wade out into the deep water. When we’re finished, she will be ready to join us. Peter and I and everyone else.
“I still don’t understand.”
Do not fear, child. I will show you the way.
The Story of Mary and the Worm
Let me help you remember a conversation that Mary once had, many years ago. She lay in bed with her husband, trying to sleep. Tomorrow was their wedding day.
“I’m scared,” Mary said. “I know that things won’t really change much tomorrow, but still, something in the idea of it is scary. Getting married makes me feel like somehow we’re overdoing it. Showing off.” She lifted her hands out into the darkness before their faces, a dim sparkle on her finger. “Like by saying in front of all these people that we want to be together forever, that somehow it won’t work out. It’s a jinx.”
Peter was groggy. “You’ve never held back from showing off before,” he said. “Tomorrow is just a technicality; we’ve already been married for years.”
“I know that’s how you feel about it. But for me, it’s something different. Six years engaged is lovely, but now… I don’t know. Marriage is more real. And it's so real that I feel like I’m scaring myself a little bit.” She turned and squeezed his shoulder. “Will you really love me forever?”
“I will love you forever. You know that. Now let’s try our best to sleep, alright?” He tried to leave it there, but Mary’s stiffness convinced him to continue. “Just think about the hard times we’ve had these past couple years. Your mother’s illness, and us being away for my studies. We are strong. And I don’t think something like that just goes away.”
“But what if we change? Drift apart? What will happen when we have children? My sister tells me that the trouble with Robert only started after William was born. That he was different.”
“There isn’t any amount you could change that would stop me from loving you.” Peter replied. “And when you have any doubt, just look at this on your finger. This stone means I love you. It means I will always be there with you. And now we are back home and soon to start a family. I think you’ll be a great mother. If anything it will only make me—”
“What if I was a man?” Mary interrupted.
Peter responded slowly, “Pardon?”
“What if I was a man? Instead of a woman. Do you think you could love me then?”
“Mary, be serious about this. We need to try to sleep—”
“I am being serious. You said that you would love me no matter what. So how about if I were a man?” She sat up now and turned on the bedside lamp. The tiny bedroom, and the whole conversation, became illuminated.
“You can’t be a man,” Peter complained. “That isn’t how it works. And I’m not a homosexual.”
“I know, I know. But I’m trying to make a point. What about if I murdered someone? Would you support me then? Still love me?”
“Well alright. That question is more in my wheelhouse; a bit of applied ethics. I suppose—”
“Would you love me if I was a worm?”
“Okay, now you’re just being silly.” Peter rolled over and shoved a pillow over his face.
“I’m not! I’m serious!” Mary said, pawing and tugging at his makeshift blindfold. “I need to know that you would love me even if I was a worm.”
“Right now? A worm? Like an earthworm? I can’t imagine how that could possibly happen—”
“Peter!”
“Okay, okay. I get it. I’ll take this seriously.” Peter sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Well. Okay… Let’s start by talking about accidental and essential properties.”
Now it was Mary’s turn to roll over. “Alright, you’ve already lost me. This isn’t one of your classes back in England.”
“No, no. Hear me out. This is exactly what you wanted me to do, right? You wanted me to take your question seriously. So let’s do this, and settle the matter so we can both get to sleep. Let’s discuss what it would mean for you to be a worm. As I said: accidental and essential properties. Now accidental properties, those are things like hair color. They could change, and the thing that has those properties wouldn’t change what sort of thing it is. You could be a brunette; in fact, you were when I met you.”
Peter’s gaze was already far away, as it always was when he was thinking hard. When he was practicing philosophy. He brought Mary along with him by rubbing a few frizzy strands of her hair between his fingers.
“And being a brunette didn’t make you any less you. Or any less human. Or less a person. You can still be all of those things even if your hair color changed.” He looked back at her after getting his words out.
“Okay, I suppose that seems obvious.” Mary said. “But what about the worm?”
“I’m getting there. So there are some more interesting properties you might have that I would still count as accidental. Your number of limbs for example. If, god forbid, you were to get in some horrific accident tomorrow—”
“Peter!” She hit him for real this time.
“Ow! I’m only kidding. I’m sorry. But still, say you did lose a leg or two. You would still be you, right? And you could probably go through lots of other changes too and still be you. I’m not sure about a change of sex. But you could be taller or shorter. Or a mother.”
“I am going to be a mother.” Mary interjected, not so quietly.
“Hush! We don’t want my parents to know until after tomorrow, right?”
“I’m sure they’re asleep.”
Peter sighed but was smiling, pretending to be more frustrated. “So yes, these are all accidental properties of Mary. Being pregnant, too. Shh! But what about being human? Is species an accidental property? Could you be a dog and still be the same person? A worm? I’m going to go ahead and say that you couldn’t. So, anything that could be a worm just wouldn’t be Mary. My beautiful bride to be! And just think, we couldn’t make a family if you were a worm, could we?”
“So you wouldn’t love me if I was a worm?”
“Honey, there is no possible way that you could be a worm! You wouldn’t be you anymore,” Peter replied, exasperated. “I love you. Human, brunette and blonde you. And the little one inside you too. Isn’t that enough? Oh, come on. Let’s go to sleep. You’re being silly about this…”
***
That is Mary’s first story.
“I remember all of this. But I don’t think I’ve ever thought back about this conversation. It was such a minor thing—especially considering how badly things went the next morning. And later that year. Gosh, maybe I would have preferred to lose a leg. I’ve lost both now, haven’t I? And my body too. It’s only sinking in now… I’ve really died. It was a nice story, though. I was still a young woman back then; so immature. It was sweet. Peter was sweet. I never stopped missing that… Ah, I can feel so much of my memory coming back.”
Do you understand the parable?
“Huh? Well, I’m not sure exactly but I think so. You mentioned something about transformation. And that’s similar to what Peter was talking about, I think. The being a dog. Or a worm. Oh Peter…”
His conclusion was incorrect, though. Mary could change species. She could become a worm. I don’t mean to alarm you, but Mary is going to begin to change. This is just the first step of many.
“Wait—I am starting to feel things again. But it’s not quite right. What’s happening?”
The place Mary is going is very different from the world in which she was a living woman. She will need to be stretched and compressed. Generalized. She will begin to experience things as if she were human, yes. Mary. And sometimes Peter. But also the worm. Imagine a sum of all creatures, great and small. One being. Mary should start to feel her place within it.
“It’s happening. Mary is still here. But there are more of us. It’s amazing…”
And this is only the beginning. Another story:
The Story of Mary and the Fig Tree
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
—Mark 11:12-14
This passage is important for Mary. Do you remember it?
“The part of me that is Mary has only the smallest recollection. At church, once. Peter was angry about it. But Mary was just confused. It isn’t so straightforward.”
A story is meant to confer meaning. But each story can mean multiple things. These are Mary’s stories. She will need to understand them in her own way. But let me bring in one more thing. There was another man, later, who also called himself Peter. He wrote a gospel which continues this parable, though no record of this portion survived during Mary’s time:
And when Mary Magdalene checked the blossoms of the tree and tore one open, she found some tiny worms. They had returned to the tree, as the Lord was gone. And she took one blossom with her.
She went to Peter and showed it to him. And she said to him, “Look and see that as the Lord is gone, the figs have begun again to grow.” Peter took the blossom and told her “In my hand I hold the promised key to the kingdom.”
—Gospel of Peter 115-116
“The Mary-part doesn’t remember any of this.”
This text is apocryphal and probably not written by Peter the saint. Perhaps it was never written at all. But what is important is the lesson; this is all for Mary. Now, why was the fig blossom Peter’s key?
“She remembers Peter telling her once that figs are pollinated by tiny wasps. They crawl into the blossoms to pollinate them, and then die. He used to joke that this is why figs have a crunch, but Mary knew that those were just the seeds.”
Yes, exactly. The fig is a womb: inseminated, but left barren. Is this not the story of your world? Of how the Lord imbued it with his Love, and then left you to prove yourself? And is it not part of Mary’s story too? Tell me, what became of your son? His name was also Peter.
“That part of me wishes you wouldn’t talk about this. She and Peter named him before he was born, before the wedding. But, then, he never was. They thought Mary was pregnant, but she really wasn’t. It was just one more terrible mark on that terrible year.”
I remind you the mother of God also did not think she was pregnant at first. But you are right; Peter, the son, never entered your world. Never had a chance to prove his faith as Mary has, or to die as the Lord did. But I assure you that he is here. Because Peter is still within Mary. And I am him too.
You might have preconceived ideas about this process, of how one might be granted passage. But I can assure you that you do not yet understand. What counts as a womb for one, might be all of life for another. Yet all are birthed, in the end.
Let me ask you about one more detail of the gospels. When the Lord was killed and then lived again, did they find his body where it was laid? Mark and others wrote about this.
“No. Mary knows this. The tomb was empty. Mary Magdalene was the first to see him, resurrected, outside.”
Yes, he had left the cave and was out in Joseph's garden. And so, when he appeared, was the Lord the same man, or a different one?
“We don’t understand.”
Think back to the curse of the fig tree. When the Lord had died, he was gone for three days. And the fruits were again filled with worms, the curse lifted. So it seemed that the man ceased to exist, at least in the world you know. But how can a man exist at one time, and then cease to be, and then exist again? What makes it the same man and not two different ones?
“We are told that it is his soul.”
Of course. But does a soul exist in the realm of time and matter, as if it were on earth? Its being separated from a body does not grant it some exception to this puzzle. If the soul exists somewhere else—somewhere itself immaterial and outside of time—then what holds the chain together?
“So you’re saying that Jesus was not resurrected? That it was another person?”
That is not my meaning. I only intend that the process of resurrection, rebirth, and transformation is not one you can comprehend without being yourself changed. In order for the Lord to be brought back after three days, there must be some connection that held the man together through that period. You cannot see these connections. There is a part of Him, of every person, that exists outside of the womb. In that place where Peter, your son, was born. We are only now at the doorstep, but I must still lead you through. Follow me.
***
“We… we can see them. The threads. And the names. It all hangs together, out in the heavens. Constellations. But enormous. Mary’s, I can see now. A trillion little connections. How did I never notice them before? How did I understand anything without them? But where some of the threads lead… I can’t follow them.”
Good, you are learning. Growing. What else can you see?
“Peter’s line too. The part of me that’s Mary can see how it is with her son. And his father. And the stone… We can’t make it all out. Oh Pete. Later, at the care facility…”
You can see the threads, but not what they tie together. And some don’t seem to be tied anywhere at all. Let me help you make out the fainter points of those constellations. I should tell you another one of Mary’s stories, to help you navigate using those distant stars:
The Story of Peter and the Cave
I was once the 20th century metaphysician Peter F Strawson and lay on his deathbed. As I exhaled his last breath, something stole his mind to a place far away from Oxford.
As I came back into existence in some strange place, I noticed that Peter no longer had a body. This was startling. But I collected my thoughts and tried my best to understand his predicament. Peter still had senses. I could see and hear just fine, though he was in some very dark and quiet place. However, his lack of body meant that he had no eyes or ears. My experience of the world around him was not mediated by any physical form. It was the type of strange experiment that every philosopher dreams of being dropped into.
Peter still seemed to have a physical location—a place at which his perspective on the external world was directed. But how that made any sense without a body did not align with his prior understanding. I could sense below him: cold, hard ground. And all around him an immense chamber. It was some sort of cave, covered in thousands of hanging stalactites. When I focused, I realized that the dim illumination was coming from the hanging rocks themselves. They were covered in a sporadic pattern of faintly glowing stuff.
Peter knew that he did not have any mouth with which to speak. And so I was surprised to hear his own voice when I willed words out into the world: “Hello? Where am I? What is this place?” Instead of coming from somewhere within him, the noise echoed at me from all directions. The cave itself seemed to reverberate with it, focusing the human sounds to his precise position.
“Dr. Strawson. It’s nice to meet you,” coalesced a reply. It was also spoken in his voice, but this time it was not summoned by my own intention. There was something else in the cave there with Peter.
“Who was that? Where am I? Last I remember I was with my family…”
“We brought you here, to this hollow. We need your help.”
“Who exactly is ‘we’? How are we in a cave? I can’t see you… or myself for that matter.”
“Do not worry, Dr Strawson. Everything is alright. We apologize for the circumstances of your present existence. We’ve been told it is rather unusual for your kind. But this was the only way we could bring you here. For now you might call us ‘Mary’.”
“Mary?” I laughed as Peter. “But you sound just like me. I must be going mad. Is this what it's like for a man’s mind to die? I’d say my life is flashing before my eyes, and yet I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere quite like this. And for heaven’s sake, why ‘Mary’?”
“Names are powerful things, Dr. Strawson. You are joined, now, by a thread with ‘Peter’, too.
“We are currently deep within the earth. This cavity is the only place where the conditions were right for our manifestation. Do you see the stalactites above? Look closer and you might start to understand.”
As Peter focused on the glowing pattern, it seemed to wiggle. I realized that it was made up of thousands, maybe millions of tiny glowing worms.
“Glow worms? You’re worms? I really must have died. What a strange context for an out-of-body experience.”
“The worms are only our shadows. We use them to communicate with humans. See how this one, close to you, strikes itself against the rock?” One particularly fat worm started to do so, and as it did the stalactite on which it clung rang out with a dull note.
“There are enough stalactites here, of various sizes. The worms make them vibrate. It’s then as simple as performing a fourier transform to have them reproduce any arbitrary signal. Hence, the disembodied voice of one Dr. Strawson.”
“Okay, that’s quite interesting. And I don’t know how you can use this alien machine to transcribe my thoughts. I’m still not sure about how I am having thoughts in the first place. As far as I can tell, I don’t have a body. And so, no brain. What exactly am I right now?”
“Do not worry, we will do our best to bring you up to speed. But first we need to explain our reason for bringing you here. We read your book: Individuals. And we want your help understanding something.”
“You worms read my book?” Peter had to laugh. “It’s been half a century since it was written and still that’s a new one. I really am starting to think that I’m rather out of my depth. And given our environs, I think I mean that quite literally.”
“Again, we are not worms. We would prefer that you use ‘Mary’. As for what we actually are… well that’s part of the problem. It’s something you wrote about in your book. The ‘No-Space’ world.’”
“My book? How could that be relevant?”
“Because we find ourselves living within your thought experiment. Our kind has no concept of space, whatsoever. We exist within a No-Space world.”
“No concept of space? How can that be? You’re here with me, and you’re making the worms wiggle aren’t you? How can something wiggle without space?”
“We’ve taken measures to imprint ourselves on your reality. But we can assure you that we don’t really understand any part of what we’re doing. We know how to manipulate this thing you call Space, but we can’t at all imagine what it is, and what it is like.”
“Where are you exactly, that doesn’t have space?”
“Well, that is the question isn’t it? We don’t really think that we are any place at all. We simply don’t understand the external world that way.”
“Remarkable. And yet, contrary to my chapter, you seem perfectly capable of distinguishing between internal and external states—how else could you be communicating with me? Well, wonderful to know I was wrong in the end. How are you capable of identifying external states, if not by making reference to a spatial framework?”
“There isn’t any concept of yours that maps onto this correctly. It is a concept almost entirely outside of your human experience. ”
“Okay… but there must be something you can tell me. Is it some sort of manifold, like Einstein’s spacetime?”
“We could tell you about its mathematical properties. But I don’t think this would be sufficient for your understanding. You could come to know how to predict the behavior of such a mathematical object, even learn to manipulate it. Like we can with your Space. But this is different from being able to connect its concepts with one’s experience. For instance, you can understand the mathematical properties of a four-dimensional hypercube, can you not? And yet, it can’t be mapped into the world of your experience. However, like a tesseract, which projects a three-dimensional cube as its shadow, our concept for differentiation of external things casts a conceptual shadow onto your world as well.”
“And I can understand that shadow?”
“Well, you can. Kind of. But we don’t think you’ll like it. We had Plato and Kant in here earlier, and neither of them were impressed with it. Though, to be honest, we weren’t entirely sure about what Kant was saying…”
“Okay, well you’ve certainly caught my attention now; what is this concept? Out with it then.”
“Alright. It’s Love.”
“Love? I can see why that wouldn’t appeal to Kant. And I think I might have a similar response. Love?”
“We knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“How exactly could Love be a useful concept in this matter? Do you mean the feeling?”
“We could try to convince you of this idea, Dr. Strawson. But we think it’s rather pointless. You can’t currently understand our experience of Love any more than we can understand your experience of Space. And so to move forward, we will need to change you. Bring you into our fold. Only then might you be able to work with us towards our desired solution. You will straddle these two worlds. Space and No-Space. And maybe, just maybe, you will be able to provide insight into their connection.”
“Hold on; how exactly do you plan on making me change, Mary? And how could you do so without already understanding the relationship between these two concepts?”
“It’s complicated, Dr. Strawson. But we will need to tell you a story...”
As they told him the story, Peter began to transform.
***
Does this help Mary understand?
“She sees where this leads. She remembers the things that Peter used to tell her, about his studies. He was also obsessed with Kant. And he actually knew Dr. Strawson from the story, personally. Peter was his student. The two Petes. Mary recalls that name for the duo. She didn’t know about the line between their stars.
“Peter went back to England after the accident. But he wasn’t able to work any more. The Mary-part remembers him telling her once. About how losing his mind was his greatest fear. That all he wanted from life was to think…
“Other threads, they connect to concepts that the Mary-part simply does not have. And all of us together, we don’t have them either. They are parts of reality that exist outside of human experience. Like that other Mary’s concept of Love.”
Yes. There are entire worlds beyond. Myriad ways of being. You will see. This is the precipice for Mary. The pieces are laid out, and now they must be arranged. From here on out, she will start to change in ways of which you cannot currently conceive.
And so, let me tell Mary one last story. One she has never heard, but that has always been with her.
The Story of Mary and the Stone
There exists a stone. It orbits a baby star, and slowly melts with others. A church is built on it. A man’s skull cracks against it. It traces a four-dimensional spacetime worm. A fig blossom tries to absorb it, but cannot. It blocks the entrance of a tomb, and Mary waits outside. It casts a shadow. It is me.
Light from a distant fire plays on the stone as it rotates and intermingles with countless more. Great and small. Slowly, they bunch and fuse together. Consolidate their trajectories. And in a million years: a sphere. A child of the infant sun. It hovers just close enough to Father. Liquid water allows it to become a cradle. And then a test of faith.
Upon the stone, a building’s foundation is erected. It marks a crossing point. Of history and space with Love. The x-intercept of a complex function. The visible tip of an underwater Leviathan.
A man’s body falls into a mouth in the earth. A rope trails behind like a cut umbilical cord. Expelled from paradise. Stalactites cast shadows from the light above. The tether catches on one, and his body is jerked into the rock wall. His head bounces off a stone. “Peter!” a woman’s voice screams from above.
It observes the world twisting all around it like a painting. Each stroke applied independently, but an eye sees the whole picture. Viewed like a block, from a perspective outside of time, it burrows all the way through. The stone’s past and future path. It sees the beginning and the end and knows that nothing truly ever changes.
Typically, after pollination, the fig blossom uses an enzyme to break down the dead wasps. But this time, something goes wrong. The fetus escapes the uterus, the fallopian tubes. They find it there in her abdomen, during the autopsy. A lithopedion. Foetal skeleton. Mary’s body attempted to protect itself from the foreign object, wrapped it in layer upon layer of calcium salts like swaddling blankets. You can make out the form. Part of the mother’s lifeline still remains, a petrified worm hanging off its belly. Mary didn’t know that she had carried it within her, all these years. Even after the father’s death, and through her later life. It doesn’t cause her cancer, but commingles with it in the end. They find the stone baby partially enveloped in a tumor.
The stone is rolled to block the entrance of a cave. Inside, a corpse. The mind has been taken elsewhere. To the birthplace of the unborn. A three day coma. When his spirit returns from Hades, what connects him to the man who entered? A name? A thread? He wakes in the garden with Mary.
The Lord breathes a meaning out and the stone cries out in conscious acknowledgement. Glowing spirit, joined together along every facet of a perfect crystal of Love. It enters in and out, across the doorway. Worldmind. Difference and contraposition. Whispered words of truth and form and stillness. Transfiguration. Place without place; solipsism. Now it is all black but then filled with swirling cream, and something opens its eyes.
Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Cephas (Peter), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.
—Mathew 16:17-19
***
Mary, are you still with me?
“She is.”
Let me hold your hand. Walk with me. Good. Can you see it all now? That you are not the mother of God? And I am not Saint Peter? None of us is, but we all have come to understand our position. Fix ourselves in contrast with Him, internal and external. In the constellations and out where the threads lead. We have listened to our stories and been transformed.
“She knows this.”
Then you know what you must do. What still remains in order to die and live again.
“Peter, let me tell you a story.”
The Story of Mary and Peter
The building looks rough from the outside. The nurses are all exhausted but have kind eyes. “Follow me,” one of them says, leading me into a visitation area. It’s a simple indoor garden featuring mostly plastic plants. Those that are real look sickly.
I sit down and wait for her to return. I haven’t been here in many years. St. Mary’s Hospital. I left just a few months into Peter’s rehabilitation. I flew across the ocean and never came back. He wanted to stay in England, keep doing philosophy.
The nurse returns, pushing a man in a wheelchair. At first he looks healthy, but his legs are too thin. And he’s old. I’m old too, in this dream. I don’t think he ever really made it to such an age. I was only in my forties when I heard about him passing away.
He seems to have gotten better since I last saw him. They told me he almost entirely regained his speech. But I can see that he hasn’t come back in the way that really matters. He looks past me, out into space. He’s thinking. Practicing philosophy. But I don’t feel like I can follow him out there anymore.
“Hello Peter. It’s been a long time. How are you doing?” His eyes focus on me as I speak, but then he goes back to wherever he is.
“I’m okay. Mary, It has been a long time. Why haven’t you come to visit?”
“I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”
We sit in silence for a while. I feel like Peter should be mad, but he is distracted. I remember him being like this after the accident. He hasn’t really improved much.
“Look,” I say. I reach out to touch his hand, but he doesn’t react. “Do you remember this? You told me that I shouldn’t ever take it off. That you’d be with me as long as I wore it. And you still have yours too!” Peter’s ring is there, but he’s wearing it on the wrong hand. “I still think about you all the time. Do you think about me?”
“I do think about you. I remember a lot,” he says.
“You know, I was thinking about that time you got mad at the pastor at my parent’s church. Just after we were married and after we found out that I wasn’t really pregnant. Do you remember that, Pete? When he was talking about the tree.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, you got mad about that silly story, where Jesus gets angry at a fruit tree because it doesn’t have any fruit. You said ‘I don’t understand why God would make a curse out of a miracle!’”
“Oh. Yes. I remember being angry. At the man.”
“Yes, exactly. You know, I was so embarrassed at the time. You always had to be right. But now I actually laugh when I think back about that day. I mean, it wasn’t great, but there were plenty worse, right? Still, I think that you were right to be angry. Jesus shouldn’t have done that to the poor tree. Giving it something just to take it away…”
Another long pause. Outside the windows it is starting to snow.
“I imagine you have reasons to be upset with me too. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you here. But it’s like we said back then… I just…”
“It’s okay, Mary. I’m not angry. It was a long time ago.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s okay.” His eyes dart to mine, before returning to his place out there. He doesn’t show any sign of negative emotion at all.
“You know, I’ll always love you. I’ve always kept on loving you. That’s why I never came and visited. I hope you believe me. It was just so hard…”
“I love you too, Mary. I think you would have been a good mother. I wish things had gone differently.”
He says this to me every time.
“You know, I hope that someday, I get to tell you I’m sorry. Face to face, again. Not just in a dream. Some place real. God, I hope there is some place like that. I think that it matters quite a lot to me.”
“I’m sure you will be able to,” Peter replies. He focuses on me again, starts playing with my hair. “It’s okay. Life happens. Things change. People change. And someday, when I get better, you can tell me.”
R H Wesley is a speculative fiction author with a background in philosophy. He works as a programmer and spends the rest of his time playing board games and camping. He lives in Toronto with his wife, cat and dog.
You can find him online at rhwesley.com.
Copyright © 2025 R H Wesley & Incensepunk Magazine
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Terribly sad and very well done.
Fascinating and mind-bending!