When a kid with a dead dad says something like that, it always shuts everybody up.

Dear Dad,

Drew just left and I’ve escaped to my room so I don’t have to listen to Mom drill me about what a wonderful guy he is.

He was nice as pie. In fact, he makes me think of a piece of pie. Not homemade like Mom’s, but more of a store-bought pie like other kids’ moms always bring to potlucks. Generally sweet and filling. Drew smiled a lot and told mom what a beautiful home we have, which is basically not true. I mean, it’s fine and everything, but our carpet is old and none of our furniture matches. He was definitely getting carried away.

When we first started talking, Drew seemed excited. He smiled in that store-bought pie kind of way and said he’d found the best verse that explained what happened when you die. It is in Second Corinthians, chapter five. Drew said that it says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” I looked it up after he left. What it really says is, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”

I asked Drew if that was the only verse. He said, “No. Of course not. But it’s the most clear.” It doesn’t seem clear to me, because Dad, you don’t seem to be present with the Lord. I mean, you haven’t seen God, have you?

I pushed Drew to tell me about some other verses and he reluctantly told me about how God says that one day he’ll separate the sheep from the goats, meaning that sheep are good and goats are bad. This made no sense to me, because goats and sheep both seem about the same to me. I mean, goats give milk and sheep give wool. My friend Paul is lactose intolerant and he can only drink goat’s milk. And I always get goat cheese on my gyro at It’s Greek to Me and it’s delicious.

Then he talked about a story called The Rich Man and Lazarus. Jesus tells the story, and in it, a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus both die. The rich man goes to hell, but he can look across this gully and see Lazarus all happy in some place called Abraham’s Bosom, which is weird. Abraham had a bosom? I guess it must mean his lap or something. But it would be weird to spend even a day in Abraham’s lap. I wouldn’t want to be in his lap for eternity. I suppose it’s just symbolic.

The rich man calls across the gully, asking Abraham to send Lazarus over to him with a glass of water. I suppose if I was in hell, I’d want a glass of water, too. But Abraham says that no one can cross the gully.

Here’s probably a stupid question: Are there any gullies up where you are?

When I asked Drew if Abraham’s Bosom was just another word for heaven, he rubbed his eyebrows with his finger and said, “I don’t know. Some people think it’s more of a purgatory.”

He showed me a couple of other weird verses, too, like where a guy was caught up into something called “the third heaven.” He said that in the book of Revelations, it says that heaven is described as a place where Jesus will wipe every tear from your eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. I liked that one quite a bit. Oh, and one other one said, “It is appointed to man once to die and after that the judgment.” That one doesn’t tell you much, but at least it’s pretty straightforward.

I kept trying to interrupt him and ask him about what actually happens when you die, like on a minute-by-minute basis. He said no one knows that. He said that since the Bible doesn’t have much to say about it, he doesn’t think it’s the point.

“It is to me,” I said. “And I bet it would be to you if your dad had died.” I knew that would shut him up and it did. When a kid with a dead dad says something like that, it always shuts everybody up.

After a minute of silence, he asked me if I was worried if you were in heaven or not. I said that yes, I was. He asked me if you’d asked Jesus into your heart. I said I’d already told him that Mom said you did. He said, “Then you don’t have anything to worry about.” Then he recited John 3:16 to me, about how if you believe in Jesus you have everlasting life.

“Yeah,” I said, “but is it a good life or a bad life? Because if you have everlasting life that’s bad, isn’t that basically hell?”

Drew said he had to go, but that he’d be happy to keep talking to me about this, which I thought was nice, considering how much he’d kept rubbing his forehead the whole time he’d been there.

Personally, I’m more confused than ever. I guess I think that maybe I know more about what happens when you die than Drew does. Not because I’m smarter than him, but just because of your letters.

Even with your letters, I still don’t really get what’s going on where you are. Isn’t there someone you can ask?

Your son,

Trevor

P.S. What do you mean when you say “my unbearable shame?” I thought we were being honest here. Can you please just explain it to me?