HOW IS HEAVEN?
“It made me so sad!” exclaimed the schoolboy,
firstborn and cherished, to his grandfather.
“But it already passed…” he added, while gazing
at the screen that showed the father of his young mother.
“What I want to know is how heaven is, where my
great‑grandmother lives?” he asked the sixty‑year‑old.
The grandfather, in milliseconds, had to
decide:
to shatter the fantasy of Abrahamic
consolation
or reveal the raw truth absent from sacred
scriptures.
“It is a realm where peace and love abound, and
all are angels,” he answered tenderly.
“Your great‑grandmother is now a guardian angel who will watch over you here on
Earth,” he emphasized.
Yet in his mind remained the truth:
Dust you are, and to earth or ashes your body
will return.
And as for the soul: none has yet returned to
tell the tale.
The child, full of innocence, insisted on more
details…
The grandfather no longer knew what to say; he
chose to preserve the illusion, as one preserves the magic of Christmas.
Though he would have preferred to paint it with
more strokes of that marvelous hope:
a wild and musical Paradise, a kingdom of
animals and plants intertwined,
where the floor is gold for all the just,
joyful, loving, and truthful.
He loves his grandson too much to break the
tradition of easing sorrows… it is heartbeat.
Franz Alberto Merino Dávila
Dedicatoria:
A mis guapos nietos Mathías y
Dante. Con especial gratitud al primogénito por recordarme, a través de su
curiosidad, la enorme importancia de proteger la magia de la infancia con total
amor.
#PoesiaLatinoamericana,
#EscritoresDeInstagram, #CuentosCortos, #AmorDeAbuelo
