Knocking On Heaven’s Door, Who Will Answer?

When I was ten, the world of writing came to me. I had been reading for years, thanks to my persistent Aunt Norma, my father’s older sister, who got her hands on some Fun With Dick And Jane books. Dick and Jane soon took the back seat to Mickey Spillane, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck. I was more than smug, quite the little dandy, reading at five years old, while my neighborhood gang of idiots couldn’t spell their name.

Around that time, my mentor, Mr. Cohen, a master gardener, the man who passed on his love of horticulture to a young boy, lost his wife to cancer, then my grandfather, the tough old World War 1 vet, caught a case of it and was wasting away before my eyes. I didn’t know what devastation meant, but it had grabbed me by the collar and shook me good.

Before my grandfather left for the hospital for the last time, he spent a few hours alone with me in his sickroom. Still able to speak and make sense. He told me of his experiences in the war, the trenches in France, the gas attacks, the men he killed in hand-to-hand combat, and the ones he killed from afar with a bullet that had no consciousness. I listened intently, absorbing every detail. War was not like it was presented on television or in the movies; it was raw, cruel, unforgiving, and mentally destroyed many men, including him. He knew it was his last roundup and accepted it with dignity. I didn’t.

The mind of a ten-year-old is wired backward from that of an adult. So, without thinking of what I asked, I said,

“Grandad, when you get to Heaven, what will you do. Are there jobs there? Will you have friends?”

He thought for a while, then answered,

” There might be work, something to keep us busy, but the main thing I want to do is apologize and ask forgiveness for the young Germans I killed in the war. I didn’t want to kill them, but it was my job, and it was theirs to do the same to me. That’s if I get to Heaven, which is a mystery to me, cause I have done some bad things in life, asked for forgiveness, but who knows how much the good Lord is willing to forgive.”

I partially understood: I was a Baptist, but a fearful one, not one of faith, but feared the outcome if I didn’t toe the line. He passed a week later, lying in a bed, reliving the hell of war that he carried till the end.

Not long after that, I was at my other grandparents’ farm in Santa Anna, Texas. My grandfather, a nice man but not particularly fond of the other cousins or me, was working on his tractor and stopped for a rest. I was nearby and sat beside him. He was aloof from us children, seeing us as farmhands, not children to be nurtured or molded, but only as labor, expected to keep our mouths shut and our eyes downcast. He made me nervous; I feared him in a way I shouldn’t have. I did mention that the brain of a ten-year-old is wired backward, so that being said, this is what I asked.

” Grandpa, when you get to Heaven, will you still have to work on the farm?” I said.

He looked at me like there was a third eye in my forehead.

” He sat for a moment and then said,

” The good book says many times that everyone has to work. If you don’t have a trade or labor for your fruits, you don’t eat, you don’t survive, and your family suffers and perishes. God is forgiving, but I think he has a limit to that forgiveness. I expect to be a farmer in Heaven, just as I am here on this God-awful piece of land, and I will do what is required of me. The Angels can’t do everything. I’ve repented for my wagon load of sin, and I think the good Lord has forgiven me, but I won’t know until I get there.” This was a few years after the small miracle that had saved his crops and brought him back to church. He was a different man religiously, but still didn’t have much use for children. He passed away a year later from Diabetes and other illnesses related to my grandmother cooking everything in bacon grease for fifty years.

Two different men, ones that I admired, two individuals that molded me, had given me advice that is with me to this day. We all must repent our sins, ask forgiveness, live with our shortcomings, and we all must work for a living, eke out what we can: dig a ditch, plant a seed, pick cotton, do what we must to survive and give our family and ourselves sustenance and a roof over our head. All these years later, those two bits of advice still make me what I am.