Short Story: Unconditional

Unlike the last story, which I wrote a few weeks ago and revised the day I posted it, I just wrote this one today, so it might be a little rough.

The good news is, this one is nice and sappy, unlike the last one, which was a bit mean spirited in places. Just like last time, I’ll have a bit at the end explaining where this came from.

Here we go again…

Unconditional

His struggle had finally ended, and he found himself adrift in a great emptiness. It was not an emptiness of form, but an emptiness of obligation and worry. He was free from his mortal toil.

A voice spoke to him, aloof, but still emanating warmth. “Welcome, Sam.”

“It’s over, isn’t it?” Sam replied. “I died?”

“Your mortal existence has ended, yes.” The voice replied. “But still you go on.”

“Is this heaven?” Sam asked.

“If it is easier for you to understand this place as Heaven, yes, but soon none of those distinctions will matter. Your Earthly bonds will slip away into distant memory, and you will simply exist here.”

“Are you God?”

“No. That term would be too limiting for this place.”

Sam tried his best to remember his final moments. What had happened to him? How had he died? He saw only faint images, an elderly woman, distraught, but forcing a smile, clutching his hand. Yes, it was Valerie, his wife. A woman in some kind of uniform, a doctor, he assumed. He must have been old and sickly.

“So, what now?” Sam asked of the warm voice. “What’s the point of this empty place? I just float around forever?”

“No.” The voice said. “Here you will live forever in the relationships you forged in the mortal world. Those you loved, and who loved you, will share in that love. All of the connections you made in your life have been building here.”

“What if I was a bad person? What if I was a murderer, or just cruel to people in general? I get to just hang out here with the people that loved me?”

“You, Sam, needn’t worry. Existence here is an amalgamation of all your love and hate and laughter and sorrow. On balance, you lived a generous and kind life. Had you been more selfish than giving, your existence here would reflect that. So, before you ask, yes, a certain 20^th century infamous cruel man is here. His eternity will be spent wallowing in the trauma he wrought.”

“Poor Paul McCartney.” Sam mourned.

“What?” the voice asked, utterly confused.

“Never mind.” Sam replied. “Other than feeling kind of carefree right now, I don’t really feel any of that love and happiness, or even sadness. What gives?”

“As you drift further from the concepts of the mortal world, you will learn to seek out the connections that are already here. For example, your parents, and grandparents. Friends who left before you. They’re here. You just need to seek them out.”

“I can see my mother again? How do I do that? Tell me!”

The voice didn’t need to reply, Sam was instantly in another place. A beach, on a bright sunny day, with young people frolicking about. There he saw his mother and father, sitting together on a blanket in the sun, just talking. They were so young; it was definitely before he was born. Neither looked to him, or acknowledged him, but he could feel an energy between them. He could feel their happiness washing over him.

“What is this?” Sam asked. “This is before I was born. They don’t even notice me.”

“They don’t know you’re here yet. Most humans in this realm aren’t anxiously looking forward to seeing their dead loved ones again, because it means—well, that their life has ended. Soon enough they will feel your presence in this place, and you will be with them again.”

“How is it I can feel their emotions here, in a time before I existed?”

“You are deeply connected to them, and they to you. Think of it like an emotional network, spanning across time. Eventually you will learn to follow the threads of that network to people whose lives you only briefly touched, but touched profoundly, nonetheless. Friends you knew only briefly. Co-workers you encouraged. A lonely soul whose only knowledge of you was your warm smile in their darkest moment.”

“Now I’m worried about people I cursed at in traffic, seeking me out to cause me misery in the ever-after.” Sam lamented.

“Tell me, Sam, are you thinking now you might seek out those who were briefly rude to you?”

“No. Not at all.” Sam said, somewhat abashedly.

“There you have it. So, it will be with others.”

“If nobody knows I’m here yet. What do I do now?”

“There is one who knows you are here. One who has been waiting for you.”

Before Sam was a doorway into a dark room. He recognized it. It was the bedroom of the first house he and his wife bought.

“No.” He said in fear. “Is Val already here? Have we been wandering around in the nothingness for that long? Or did she go so quickly after me?”

“No.” the voice said assuredly. “Val is not here yet.”

He stared into the room. The bed was neatly made but there appeared to be something bunched up on it. A small pile of clothes perhaps? Then the small pile moved, and a pair of glowing eyes met him.

“Allie?” Sam questioned.

The pile stood upright, revealing the form of a cat. The cat stretched and let out a meek warble.

Had Sam still been shackled to his mortal form his heart might have burst in that instant. “She’s here!” he cried out.

“Yes. She’s been waiting for you.”

Sam stood at the doorway, afraid to enter. “They’re just like us? The pets? They get to come here?”

“Though humans cannot always understand the emotions of other beings, they are emotional nonetheless. In rare instances, they form a bond with a human and so they also share this place with that human.”

“But surely she has other connections. What of her mother? And she had kittens before we got her, what of them?”

“It is in their nature to cast off those connections. It is part of how they survive the mortal life. But, when she met you that changed.”

“Was it just random? She just happened to like me?”

“Oh no.” for the first time Sam could feel the voice’s amusement. “It was the love you gave her, magnified back, one hundred-fold. The two of you bonded beyond what humans are capable of with other humans. It was a bond, from her perspective, anyway, that transcended life itself.”

“Human love is conditional. Even the ones humans pledge their lives to; children, spouses, parents, that love can change. It can weaken and even break. Humans are complicated and often selfish. It is in their nature.”

“Allie never doubted your love. When a storm raged outside your house, you were there with her, your mere existence assuring her she would be safe. Even when you were gone for days at a time, she knew you would return. When you stepped in a wet pile of her sick, and bellowed out her name in disgust, it didn’t faze her. She loved you unconditionally from the moment you met, and beyond the moment she left the material realm.”

“And so, she has waited here for your return. If you had lived another fifty years, she would have waited those fifty years and a million more. The seed of that love was planted so many years ago and here it will blossom for all eternity.”

Sam stepped forward into the old bedroom and curled up on the bed next to his cat, Allie. She placed herself in a little loaf, facing him, her eyes wide open as she gazed upon him, ever watchful, ever adoring.

“I don’t want to leave her, but soon others will seek me out, is that right? And then she will be waiting for me again.”

“Yes, soon others will seek you, but you are no longer limited by a physical form that can only exist in one place. You can be anywhere a connection exists, and those connections will feel what you feel in this place. This bond you made with Allie will be like a beacon that burns brighter than a thousand suns across all the lives you touched. This gift she gave to you is the immortal gift you now bestow upon others.”

Sam felt something that transcended any experience in his mortal life or any mortal life for that matter. It was as if all the accumulated emptiness of a billion lifetimes had been filled. It was joy beyond comprehension. A joy that could only exist in this endless place.

As a billion trillion lives came and went upon the Earth, as billions of years passed, as the Sun went dark, Allie’s love for Sam endured, beyond a time when time itself was no longer counted.

But she would still occasionally wake him up by hacking up a hairball. Some things even the after-life can’t change.

And so ends another masterpiece!

This is, of course, about my cat, who worships me like some kind of god. No, she is not even remotely near the end of her life, but I found it funny to imagine and afterlife where she was still there watching over me. Writing about this is a bit therapeutic. It takes a little bit of the sting out of knowing one day I won’t have her anymore.

That’s pretty much it for this week. Thanks for reading. Or, if you didn’t read… that’s ok too. 😁