When you’re dead you’re dead but you’re still alive
says my Sunday School teacher, then she smiles and scares me good, I’m only ten years old and maybe fear’s only going to get worse until I finally die and it’s gone forever or am I with it for keeps so then she asks me after class if I’m doing what it takes to make the Here -after when I die and I lie Yes ma’am, but add I thought you just said we don’t die at all–we live forever and she laughed and said Well, I’m not so sure that life in Hell is what I’d call living, then she smiled and winked but I can’t do that, I can’t wink unless you let me use both eyes and rest.• • •
Gale Acuff is a retired university professor who taught in the US, PR China, and the Palestinian West Bank. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.