Final Score

This was it.

“Here we go,” ol’ man Templet mumbled inarticulately. Everyone leaned in.

He anticipated drawing in his last breath in his beautiful death and delivering it back out with the weight of a fleeing soul. A beautiful end to a beautiful story. The Templet obituary would be the one everyone would want. Painless and peaceful—who could ask for more? He couldn’t have scripted it any better. His cue would wait just a moment, and he gave one last perusal of his surrounding family with their silent tears and quivering lips. Some genuine, most staged. Tally time: one brother, one wife, two daughters, one missing son-in-law, one dead son-in-law, one son only half there. Three Templets, four others.

William Templet paused at each—certainly the final moment could wait—for one more eyeful of each one of them. The brother soon to follow him into the unknown. The two daughters, neither with husbands any longer. The wife who stood inert, no longer able to participate in the morbid vigil for a man who had sewn her doubts for the reaping forty years earlier. The grim reaping.

There were mistakes, sure.

One son-in-law of whom he never approved and was proven right by the painful explosion that shattered that marriage. Another son-in-law of whom he did approve—even loved, and he was proven a fool when the suicide happened. That feckless daughter—Suzanne—was it her fault? If it were, was that his fault in raising her the way he did?

Or in anything he had done?

Tally time: one unhappy wife, one widowed and unhappy daughter, one divorced and unhappy daughter, one ne’er-do-well son, one brother lost in dementia.

He had done his best with Suzanne, this widowed daughter. She had become a hysteric about forty years ago—as Suzy—still a child. He remembered how it was a change that happened rather abruptly. She became defiant. Had an answer for everything. The child who knew more than her parents. What’s done was done and you have to trudge on with the tools you have at the time.

When Suzanne came of age, he had pinned all of his hopes on her husband helping her navigate her life, but then he had navigated himself to the end of his own world and off the very edge into the abyss. He felt the draw of that same vacuum and it was seductive.

The abyss. His own world was now flat and he was moving toward his own finite horizon.

He snorted a laugh, which to his audience sounded like a cough, prompting raised eyebrows and a few open mouths of concern. Concern for what? They knew the deal. They knew what was happening here. He could start hemorrhaging out of his eyeballs and why would it matter now?

This was it.

After his eyes finished their sweep, the Templet passing in review complete, he privately reaffirmed his love for each one of them whether they wanted it or not; even his son, with whom he had estranged himself, then reconciled, all because of a son’s weakness and certainly not a father’s weakness: was David’s drug abuse his fault, like Suzanne’s fate?

He thought not. He did what he had to do with the tools he had at the time.

Would he have done things differently? Sure, now that he paged through the last part of his book—the index of his life, the final tally—any item available for reconsideration by just remembering it. It would take just a reminisce for a brief revisit to his life in review. But no re-dos. You trudge on with the tools you have at the time, and this time, on his deathbed, the tools were final: one hammer and six nails to shut his coffin for jettison into the abyss.

His life. How did he do? Were his couple of billion heartbeats tabulated somewhere in the great eternity’s actuary table of life along with the tallied daughters, sons-in-law, wife, brother, and son? Had he lived enough, trading one hour’s less sleep here and two hours’ less sleep there for three more hours of living? Did he break even? He would soon find out: the afterlife, if there were one.

Or nothing? The joke on us. His entire life story and sentience negated into irrelevance by oblivion.

Templet chose to believe the afterlife version. Had to be. Better be. If not, he would strain to sense his oblivion to resent it, fighting a paradox, contradicting oblivion itself; his anger would prove so powerful as to shatter the constraints by which oblivion imprisons one’s worth, fate, destiny, and intrinsic importance to self. And, of course, to the ones hovering over him in his final hour.

Go with the afterlife, he thought, because the alternative would muster feelings that would be hard to defend in that afterlife.

The afterlife. Would it be Heaven, perfect happiness, camaraderie with those who went before him? All his dreams come true? Where Malcolm lived and David could be brought back into the fold, whole? Where whatever happened to Suzy to make her so hysterical, did not? Where every facet of every relationship beamed beautifully and perfectly? Angels, seraphim, cherubim, and God Almighty himself and Jesus and Moses and Mother Mary. That would be nice. Wings would be cool.

But he realized such was his childhood afterlife, little Willie Templet’s religion of rules and Heaven and Hell, reward and punishment. His religion, he protested, was the adult version. Not Willie, but William Templet’s. A rational construct that only a Supreme Being could create. Sure, he could have some ideas, such as communion on a holy, supranatural, and fulfilling level with everyone who’s ever existed. Ever? His version also placed it outside of time. Ever was ridiculous. It wouldn’t be with everyone who’s ever existed, but everyone who has existed, exists, and will exist. What a presence! And in having an adult faith in a supreme being, he realized that however sensibly wonderful he thought his destination, that the limits of human understanding—within the capabilities of that 3-pound brain—would only be a scratch on the ultimate reality. He knew he would be blown away by this next reality.

Yes.

He smiled. He would soon be with all of his loves—the ones who ever lived or live now—many at his bedside—and who will ever live—great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and on. The massive tree, whose branches were all made up of umbilical cords, all reeled back in for self-nonself and all-else consolidation. He could only imagine.

He did one more sweep of the gallery and then smiled. One more smile wouldn’t affect his lifetime tally of smiles. Everyone stood, but not because it was standing room only. Now he felt the recession of time and space that could only be filled by his last breath. He drew it in. It failed to return out. The weight of a fleeing soul would find another way.

He passed a sudden, unbridled torrent of gas. Everyone knew it was his last word.

The silent tears became noisy. The end of a chapter can be just as sorrowful as the loss of the one who creates the ellipsis…the next chapter would follow without him. A sobering reminder of one’s own mortality is a moving experience. Hands squeezed others’ hands. Quivering became soft cries. They all sought the eyes of each other, sweeping the circle as he had done just a moment earlier. But there was no cacophony or din for his had been a good death. A very nice death indeed. It didn’t get out of control, for not much would change in their lives.

This was it, Templet thought.

He opened his eyes and his childhood religion smacked him hard. There stood the pearly gates, very high and firmly shut and secured by a very large, solid gold lock, its key hanging from a gold chain on the white-robed man standing behind the dais between him and his afterlife.

Wow, he thought, as a sentiment he always had, has, and ever will have. Wow.

He eyed the keeper of the gates. Who would speak first? Certainly it wasn’t his place. He would wait. He laughed at the concept of waiting in a place outside of time. Out loud.

“That’s number 674,843,” the man said, adding an entry to the open book that sat on his dais.

“Excuse me?”

“That was your 674,843rd laugh, although I really should add it to the 1,642 chuckles. Do you care, really? I mean at this point, we really stop counting and tally it all up.”

“I’m sorry sir, I do not understand.”

“Mr. Templet—Mr. William Templet—you have laughed 674,842 laughs, guffaws, and hoots in your lifetime. Fewer chuckles and hardly any chortles, although I’ve always found that to be splitting hairs. Or splitting haws, I should say.” He laughed at his own joke.

“How many laughs does that make for you?” he asked the shining man.

“Oh, you don’t want to know,” he answered. Both shot each other a wry grin, as if it had been rehearsed. “My, my, look at the snickers. You were very snarky, Mr. Templet.”

The man fingered a glowing gold ribbon that sat deep within the packed pages of the book and used it to open to that section. “Ah,” he said, “eructations.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eructations. Nothing? How ’bout belches?”

“Oh, yes, belches.”

“24, 205 eruct—er—belches.”

“You’ve counted my belches?”

The shining man looked back down at the book, finding some more shining ribbons of different colors. He methodically flipped them one by one, pausing at each. Finally, one section caught his attention. “Yes, belches,” he answered, then looked back up at Templet. “Oh, I have everything here,” he added. “Heartbeats, blinks—

“How many blinks, exactly?” The sarcasm didn’t project as obviously as he had meant it.

“Little more than half a billion, each eye.”

“Each eye?” The ineffective sarcasm missed its mark again.

“504, 576,342, left eye. 504, 575, 622, right eye.”

“They’re different. Are you sure your data is correct. Shouldn’t they be the same?”

“We count winks as blinks. You obviously are a right-eye blinker.”

“Of course,” the Templet said, “that would explain it.” He was confused, denied the mysteries of the universe in lieu of such superficiality. “This is all so very silly, isn’t it?” He watched the shining man page through the book again and grew inpatient. “And this all means what?” He asked, with a touch of demand included.

“You mean, besides your winks being exactly 720?”

“Yes.”

“In due time, William, in due time. Now, sneezes, ejaculations…”

“Ejaculations?”

“Um, yes. Ejaculations—orgasms. It says here…4,209.”

“Wow,” Templet whispered to himself.

“Even so, that’s actually way less than average.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“My wife and I had…issues,” Templet said quietly.

“We’re not counting masturbation of course. Otherwise, it’d be quite a different number, wouldn’t it? No, we shan’t count them.”

“Thank God.”

“Don’t thank God. It’s not that He disapproves. It’s just a don’t ask, don’t tell thing. So, we just don’t count them with the official ejaculations.”

“O.K., how many masturbations, if you must?”

“Well,” the shining man said, focusing on a line in the book, “it’s a footnote here, um…Whoa!”

“Yea, I get it, more than my ejaculations.”

“Your official ejaculations.”

“Of course, as you say, the…official…those things.”

“Ejaculations,” the shining man repeated.

“Yea, those. Thanks.” Whose afterlife was this? This fit nowhere in any version—the children’s version or the adult version. This was a Monty Python version. William Templet’s face fell. He appeared a bit dejected.

“Don’t fret, William. Can I call you William?”

“Sure.”

“Your maturation was higher than average. That’s something to be proud of, I suppose.”

“In what way?” Template asked. “What’s average maturation? How much higher was mine?”

“The average maturation, of course, is the median between an Oxford-educated gentleman and a transient, boorish sheetrock drywall worker.” Templet gulped.

“My first job was hanging drywall,” he said guiltily.

“You see, William, how far you came. I mean, you didn’t go to Oxford—not even Harvard.”

“Princeton? Does Princeton count? Because I did go there.”

“Really?”

“O.K., I was accepted there.”

“Really?”

“O.K., I applied there. Doesn’t that count?”

“Hmm,” the man said sadly, “not as much as Harvard. In fact, I think you’re probably closer to drywall installation than Oxford on the grand scheme of things. And, let’s see, you didn’t even do that well there, either…only 6200 square yards of sheetrock.”

“If you’re counting, and of course—”

“Oh, I am.”

“It was a summer job,” Template insisted. “So long ago. It was to help my daughter pay for her abortion—”

“Really? You two must have been very close. The daughter who could confide anything.”

He realized his mistake right away. If the exact number of ejaculations was well documented, certainly the number of abortions—whose exact number was 1—wouldn’t be a secret.

“Does that make me a bad person?” he asked the shining man.

“No, what makes you a bad person is that the number is zero. Well, not a bad person, more like a chump. She used that money for a breast enlargement. She wasn’t pregnant. Surely you knew that, didn’t you?”

“No. No, I didn’t. I thought she looked different by the time we got to beach weather.”

“Do you want to know how many times she had sex?”

“Not really,” he answered, but he knew the jig was up. “She’s my daughter. I really don’t think the confidante stuff goes that far.”

“Gee, forty-three years ago, from May 3 to June 22, why…she had sex as many times as you, and that—Mr. Templet—is what makes you a bad person.”

He was waiting for this shoe to drop. A single shoe from a man who didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“I guess that’ll send me where I need to go?” he said.

“Yes, William, and by my tally, for the 3,493rd time. For the man who knows everything better than everyone else. The man who has an answer for everything. Better luck next time, William.”