HEAVENLY
By Brian Beard
`Different strokes for different folks` might well be a universal take on what `Heaven` means to people. A sweetshop, wherein to help yourself, might be heaven for a child, mountains of cash might be an adult`s take on what it means to be in heaven. In between there would be myriad opinions and mind-sets to describe heaven, a bit like the debatable essay title, `God – discuss`.
My own take would have been an idyllic scene which manifested one summer afternoon, in 1983, outside the 6th Form block of the school where I was a teacher. Two girls, in my form, approached me and in the ensuing conversation asked various questions which centred on their impending post-school future. The conversation somehow got around to my views on the future of which there was less left to me than those two 16 year olds.
“When you are very old” they said in unison, “what do you think you will look back and and what regrets might you have?”
A bit deep when the usual exchange between a 30 plus year old teacher and a couple of teenagers usually involved more mundane things such as career advice and the latest pop sensation. I thought for a moment and, mentally, closed my eyes, and immediately saw a country scene. I explained the scene, in answer to their question, but without saying that it was what I was seeing. I explained.
“When I`m about 83 I want to be sitting on a chair, on a hillside, overlooking mountains and smiling to myself with a smidgen of self-satisfaction that I regretted nothing.”
Fast forward three decades, and a bit more, I was on holiday at a place in the south west of France, a spot where I went annually and had done for many years, only difference being on the occasion in question, after years visiting the same spot, I had a `Damascus` moment.
I was sitting on a white-painted whicker chair, on a hillside, overlooking the mountains, a good few years short of 83 I hasten to add, when I was hit by a sudden realisation, never before experienced despite having been in exactly the same spot without the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as they were doing then. It was exactly the same scene I had described to my two teenage pupils, all those years before, even down to the whicker-chair which I had painted white. On realising the significance of that moment I took stock of my life to that point. Although that is a whole other story, and much, much longer than this brief perspective, which would include the few regrets I have gathered along the way my realisation was this.
Heaven to me was, sitting in the sun, in a vast expanse of green grass and an extensive area of forest, with a lake alongside for good measure under a big sky. Followed by a short intake of fresh country air.
That is my heaven.
