Six Afterlives

These poems belong to a series called “Famous White Men in Mormon Afterlives.” They are thought experiments about eternal life and progression. I wrote them (and several others) in May 2018 after reading Mary V. Dearborn’s Ernest Hemingway: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 2017). Reading about Hemingway’s life reminded me of a presentation I attended several years ago on the many times proxy ordinances had been performed for Hemingway and his four wives in Latter-day Saint temples. Latter-day Saints perform these ordinances because we believe that life continues after death, and that the experience of life after death is virtually the same as what we experience in mortality—except that it is “coupled with eternal glory” (D&C 130:2). Hemingway’s life, then, did not end by suicide in 1961. It continues to this day in the spirit world. Hemingway still inhabits space and adapts to his new surroundings, much the same way we do when we move houses or change jobs.

With eternal life in mind, I began imagining what life might be like for Hemingway and other famous people. How would they adapt to spirit prison or paradise? What would they do differently? I was particularly interested in the “dead white men” who have long been overrepresented as key players in our historical narratives. What would existence be like for them without the privilege they enjoyed in mortality? How would they respond to a world where everyone was truly equal in the eyes of God? Would they find redemption, or would they cling to their old ways?

Hemingway in Paradise

At first he was 
sincere. He gave 
up drinking, watched

his language, 
attended elders 
quorum with Scott

and Archie. Maybe
he liked that fishing
was better in Paradise

than in Prison, and the 
big game hunting was more 
exciting than expected—

even if knowing
the lions and rhinoceroses
were immortal

took some of the 
fun out of it. And 
the same was true

for the bullfights, 
although St. Peter 
promised they would

improve once someone 
finished the temple work 
of the great Belmonte.

But then a few 
weeks passed, and 
he saw that Paradise

was no Havana 
in the summer. It 
wasn’t even Key

West. It was too 
clean, too well-lighted, 
too much like Oak Park.

And the hills were 
more like gray hippos 
than white elephants.

Sure, he was 
perpetually thirty, 
but he wanted to be

eighteen and wounded, 
laid up in an Italian 
villa with a nurse

and a bottle of 
vermouth, instead 
of where he was,

forever sealed to 
four women who 
didn’t really like him,

and each afternoon 
was filled not with death, 
but life eternal.

Yes, what he really 
wanted were the lakes 
of Michigan, the green

hills of Africa, the 
rivers of Spain. But 
mostly what he wanted

was a place where 
nothing was as truly true 
as his one true sentence.

Self-Help

Progress, not stasis, 
was the object and design 
of existence in heaven.

When Dale learned this, 
he had dreams of building 
another empire,

bigger and nobler 
than the one he could 
not take with him

when he died. 
Everyone he saw 
needed help, and

if the same 
sociality existed here 
as it did there, then

the hosts of the 
dead, both great and 
small, would still

need his expertise 
in winning friends 
and influencing

people. He started 
a public speaking tour. 
He wrote two new books,

How to Stop Worrying 
and Start Living 
Eternally and The Quick

and Easy Way to 
Effective Exaltation. But 
the market for self-

help was unexpectedly 
poor in Paradise. 
Jesus had beat

him to the punch, 
and, frankly, had a 
better program.

Dale was devastated. 
Surrounded by boxes 
of unsold books, he

criticized, condemned, 
complained. He did 
not act enthusiastic.

How could he? In 
two weeks’ time, he 
was back to

selling motor- 
trucks for a living, 
keeping company with

cockroaches and 
neckties in a cheaply- 
furnished flat. He

was lonely, disappointed, 
bitter, and rebellious. 
He couldn’t smile.

A Narrative of A. Gordon Pym

Edgar Allan Poe did not 
die that day in Baltimore. 
The drunk, disheveled man 
they fished out of the gutter

was his less impressive 
double. The real Poe had lit 
out for the West on a stagecoach 
two weeks earlier, finding

his way first to Kanesville, 
then to Salt Lake City. There 
he changed his name to Arthur 
Gordon Pym, accepted baptism,

married three wives, fathered 
twenty-six children, and never 
wrote another word of fiction 
or poetry for the rest of his

long life. He died in full 
fellowship with the church, a 
lighthouse keeper on the Great 
Salt Lake, a father of sorts

to the whales that called 
the lake their home. In Paradise, 
he maintained his low profile, 
avoiding creditors and every bad

writer he had reviewed with 
wit as sharp as an Ourang- 
Outang’s razor. He served quietly 
as a ward membership clerk, a

guardian angel to alcoholics 
and drug addicts, and a muse 
to various teenagers with literary 
aspirations. He found, in short,

his El Dorado. It was there— 
across the lunar mountains, down 
the shadowy valley. He had 
ridden boldly, and it was there.

Jonathan Edwards, Champion

Disappointed that hell was not as real 
as he’d imagined, Jonathan Edwards 
cheered himself up at the rec center 
Ping-Pong table. He bought his own 
paddles and a carton of white plastic 
balls. He studied A Congregationalist’s 
Guide to Table Tennis and, more furtively, 
A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ping-Pong. 
When his mind grasped the basic theory 
of the game, he recruited an opponent 
from the foosball table and sent his 
first ball flying.

He was not, to his surprise, a naturally 
gifted player. His early efforts seemed 
uninspired—embarrassing even. Hand- 
eye coordination was not a skill he had 
learned at Yale as a pimply eighteenth- 
century teen. He flinched when the ball 
came at him, afraid it would smite 
him in the face. Sometimes he 
swatted and missed or connected too 
hard with the ball, hurling it across 
the room like a damned soul into 
a pit of fire and brimstone. Ping-Pong 
was a game of skill; it had a learning 
curve. No grace, irresistible or other- 
wise, had a role in selecting who won 
and who lost. It was the player with 
the paddle, not God, who determined 
where the ball would land. Winning 
was a matter of will, not unconditional 
election. Yes, one became a champion 
because he persevered—but he per- 
severed because he willed himself 
to do it.

It took him six months, and some soul 
searching, but Jonathan Edwards became 
the Ping-Pong champion he longed 
to be. At the rec center, they called him 
“The Spider.” He gave into his depraved 
nature, and easily won every game he 
played. He cast away his Puritan garb 
and started wearing designer sunglasses, 
high-end workout clothes, and gold chains. 
If a garment screamed reformed theology, he 
sent it to Goodwill or Deseret Industries. 
He became a new man. Rather than 
look to the sky or the dust beneath his 
feet, he cast his eyes across the net, 
unafraid of the moment.

A Man among the Gentiles

The admiral did not understand 
why his ships still sailed the icy 
fires of hell. In 1492, God had

wrought upon him to sail the 
ocean blue. If he had stayed home, 
others seeking liberty would’ve never

found their new world. White 
and delightsome Europe needed 
a release valve. He gave it to

them and spread Christianity in his 
wake. So why was he still tormented, 
racked with the pains of a damned

soul, when all he had done was 
follow the Spirit? What he had done, 
he had done quickly and in God’s

name. If that was a crime, clap 
him in irons; he had been in prison 
before. Time would vindicate

his method. For what were rape, 
slavery, conquest, and genocide when 
one had a role in God’s immutable

plan, when life in this round world was 
cheaper than accountability? No one 
he knew would have done anything

different. Yes, God and His Spirit 
had wrought upon him—and him alone. 
He would stay the course, see his

voyage to the end, come Hell or 
Hell’s high waters. His ships were fleet, and 
they could weather the storm.

Breakfast

Every Friday morning, Harry 
Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle meet for breakfast at 
a café downtown. In life, they 
used to puzzle for hours over 
the question of life after death. 
Harry’s skepticism had kept 
the conversations lively; Doyle’s 
long-suffering had kept them 
friends. So it was in the Spirit 
World: neither man could 
help returning to the topic, 
even though the Big Questions 
had all been answered. It 
was now the finer points, 
the hows and whys of eternal 
existence, that brought them 
together like sunshine to 
a mountain peak or frost 
to a window pane. Keeping 
in character, Harry was a 
how-man, Doyle a why. One 
pondered walls, boundaries, 
padlocks on pearly gates. The 
other sought the elementary: 
the clue, the solution, the lost 
in a found world. Since coffee 
and certain teas were unavailable, 
they settled for Postum and 
juice. Doyle liked ham and 
eggs and an English muffin. 
Harry usually ordered pancakes 
and fruit cocktail. On Fridays 
when it rained, they sat indoors, 
at a table by the window. If 
neither friend had much to say, 
they would eat contented, each 
enjoying the moment, as puddles 
formed on the chairs outside.