Silver Lining Questions

This week has had too much dying. Far too much. Isn't this stuff supposed to stop at three? From a girl I ran track with to J-Man's grandma to my high school librarian who used to bring us farm-fresh eggs to my sister's childhood friend to the 16 year old student that was murdered at the edge of school property... Just way too much.

I think I'm handling it all.  I think we all are.  It's just a lot.

I'm thankful to have my faith and a set of beliefs that includes a restful and joyful afterlife, but that doesn't make thinking about the families of these people magically less painful. It doesn't make me wish that J-Man's trip west hadn't been able to take place early enough for MDG to meet his other great-great-grandma on the G side. It doesn't make me less furious that drug-related crime has led to a second student's murder in my high school in less than a year. It doesn't make me ache less for a seven year old who watched her mother battle a relentless illness for nine months.

So, rather than spending tonight dwelling on loss, I think I'll look at cute pictures of my little guys and consider a new angle to life after earth.

Cute, right?

But anyway, what I'm getting at is, what if when we die, we get to look back at our lives and really truly see everything? Not just the big spiritual stuff like - was I honest or compassionate or charitable, but the silly little details that you just can't get answers to while you're here.  What would I look for?  Here's my work-in-progress list

1) Did Adnan do it? (come on, you're listening to Serial weekly and wondering too, right?)

2) And what about all those episodes of Disappeared I watched this summer? What are those folks up to?

3) Where did PDG hide my school ID cards that day he went in my purse and took my work lanyard and then lacked the short term memory and vocabulary to help me find them?

4) Just how pleasant (or unpleasant) of a surprise was I to my parents when they got the news they were gonna have a 3rd kid... six years later?

5) What happened to my pet chicken, Peep-Peep, that disappeared with just a trail of feathers back in fifth grade? Was it really as gruesome and sad as I imagined? Or did he make friends with the wild turkeys and leave for a life of leisure?

6) What do the Russian ladies say at the park when they look my direction, then at my kids, pause, then lower their voices? I've been correct to assume it has nothing to do with me, right?

7) Lastly, but possibly most importantly, where was that bar where J-Man first bought me a coke, danced on a table, and sat by me discussing best-movies-ever while Guacamole Girl stuck her finger in my appetizer? The night we exchanged numbers. Spectacle night. Some might say, the night it all began. Where between 1st and 3rd avenues and 77th and 96th streets was it and why could we never, ever find it again?

I think answering these questions, plus a giant game of who-was-on-the-same-plane/bus/train-as-me-before-we'd-ever-met, should be a fun and not so heavy way to pass time in the eternities. If, you know, passing time there is a thing. At the very least it's nice to imagine that some day I might conceivably get some clarity.

What would be your burning, totally unanswerable questions?