When I was 7, my hamster died. (Wait, it gets even funnier)
“Don’t cry, sweetie,” mother patted me on the back. “It went to the hamster heaven. Let’s go buy you a new friend!”
In the street, we saw that homeless lady that usually sits on the same bench for as long as I remember. When my father would give me a new penny, I would pretend I put it in my piggy bank, but would always run to this lady and give it to her.
Now, I thought, there was a better way to comfort her because what would one more penny do her?
“Don’t worry,” I told her earnestly. “You will go to hamster heaven!”
That look she gave me.
“Honey,” mother grabbed my hand and accelerated, visibly disturbed. “First, hamster heaven is only for hamsters. Second, you are not supposed to tell people… oh look, here it is!”
We entered a big pet shop.
As we went through, all I could think about was, how can there be so many kinds of heaven? Parrot heaven, lizard heaven. African cockroach freaking heaven?
Why does everyone need to have their own version? Is there one for me? Do I have to die to find it?
We brought no new pet home that day. Only more questions in my head.
Years passed, but no answers came. If there was heaven, I never found it. Not for hamsters, not for cockroaches, certainly not for anxious women trying to get by on a tabloid column salary, feeding an unemployed boyfriend.
Now I’m looking at your face that has no traces of ever thinking of anything important. You are busy with your biggest decision for the day — which cocktail to waste another $15 on.
In my mind, I’m still staring at the words in your new journal that you kept writing for days and hiding in your only shoe box. I stole it this morning to look, and it only had this:
“I met this gurl. she is wierd. alwayze thinkin. not good.”