The best-selling book “Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back” tells the tale of four-year-old Colton Burpo, who, after losing consciousness during surgery, travels to Heaven. When he awakes he reports everything he’s seen to his dad, Todd, a Nebraska pastor, who then co-authors a book about this real-life miracle. Like a lot of people, I thought at first that this was just a money-grubbing hoax, until the same thing happened to me, Kent Kimmelman, an entertainment lawyer.
It all started when I was doing hot yoga and the woman next to me fainted while trying to hold the downward-dog pose. She fell over on me and broke my wrist, and though the doctor who was setting it offered to use a local anesthetic, I demanded a general. While I was out, the doctor later told me, I stopped breathing for almost a full minute, something that usually happens only when my girlfriend is choking me during sex.
While I was out, at first all I saw was a blinding whiteness, so I assumed that I was either dead or at the next Republican Convention. But then I heard the most impossibly beautiful wordless melody, as if Mariah Carey were giving birth to an even better singer. Then I heard my aunt Rita’s voice saying, “So, Kent, we’ve been waiting,” and I was puzzled, because my aunt Rita died three years ago, during a botched neck-lift, which necessitated a turtleneck sweater for the open coffin.
But when I heard Aunt Rita’s voice and smelled her cheap Estée Lauder-knockoff perfume (she used to say, “Estée is gone, so she doesn’t need my money”), I thought, Am I in Heaven? I looked down and saw that all I was wearing were the cleanest underpants I’d ever owned, and then I saw Aunt Rita wafting toward me, and she said, “So, welcome to Heaven. You might think about a robe.”
Right now, you’re probably wondering, What did Heaven look like? Well, picture soaring golden columns amid fluffy white clouds—and, as Aunt Rita said, “This is just the foyer.” As Aunt Rita guided me I saw clusters of serene, glowing people, all sprouting glorious feathered wings.
“So, is Jesus up here?” I asked.
“And Allah and Vishnu and Zeus and you name it,” Aunt Rita replied. “Although none of them ever talk to each other; they’re all very ‘Let’s just agree to disagree.’ But whenever God shows up, I’m telling you, it’s like musical chairs. Everyone’s all, ‘Excuse me, but I believe that God was speaking to me.’ ”
“So, there is a God?” I asked.
“You betcha,” Aunt Rita said, “although He’s all about a three-day workweek. It explains a lot. I’m not begrudging Him anything, but there’s a lot of napping and downtime and Candy Crush. Would you like to meet Him?”
“Yes!” I said, as Aunt Rita brushed the hair out of my eyes and elbowed me so I’d stand up straight. Then she took my hand and led me into this enormous throne room, filled with bobbing cherubs and bowls of M&M’s with the word “God” printed on them. God wasn’t seated on His golden throne, and instead was sprawled on the nearby marble steps, checking His phone.
“Look at this!” God said. “It’s a cat hugging another cat! Isn’t that cute? I made those cats!”
As I watched, God kept changing, from a tall, white-haired, bearded man into a dignified young Asian woman and then into an African-American teen-ager and more; it was like a PBS promo. “I like to mix it up,” He told me, although at that moment He was a female Venezuelan dwarf. “What do you think?” She asked. “I’m going for Latina Frodo.”
“Um, it’s so nice to meet you,” I said. “I use your name all the time.”
“Not in vain, I hope!” He chuckled, as He became a floating mass of dazzling, pulsating crystals. “Look at me—now I’m a chandelier that sounds like Morgan Freeman! I’m kidding! Although would you like to know something? Every time a human being says God damn this or God damn that, I actually have to think about it. I’m, like, O.K., do you really want me to damn that mud puddle, or that table leg you just stubbed your toe on, for all eternity? It’s always a judgment call, especially when people are talking about Putin or Arizona.”
That was when I felt myself starting to get pulled away, and God, who was now a transgender Inuit, told me, “Oops! Sorry about that! You’re not dead yet! You’re gonna have to go back! This happens all the time!”
“Yeah,” Aunt Rita murmured, gesturing to God. “Especially whenever He’s getting a massage.”
“Rita, you just hush,” said God, who was now a perfect white rose inside a Lucite paperweight. “Everyone makes mistakes. Remember when I accidentally let that obnoxious four-year-old come up here, and he kept whining about whether he had to split his subsidiary rights with me? So I told him, ‘You go on home and tell everybody about how nice I was, and I mean genuinely nice and not phony nice like Satan.’ And then that little boy got all excited and he asked, ‘So, can I meet Satan?,’ and I could tell that he was thinking: sequel. So I just smiled in that way I have and I said, ‘Someday.’ ”
That’s when I woke up back in the hospital, surrounded by my loved ones as well as my family. My girlfriend said, “Kent, this is a miracle! We all thought you were dead!” I looked around and I said, “Well, I guess that explains the probate consultant.” And then my best friend, Connor, who was wearing my Rolex, asked, “So, while you were technically dead, what happened? Can you remember anything?” I said, “I remember all of it, because it was so beautiful and deeply personal and something I could never possibly put into words. But maybe I can hire someone who can.” ♦
