A LESS DAUNTING PURGATORY

BY ANNA R. TRIPP 

 

Driving through the Smokey Mountains:

The trees are green, the sky is blue.

My mother is driving, weird.

My mother rarely drives on road trips, usually my siblings and I do.

I am in the backseat with my sister, my brother is riding ‘shotgun’.

No one else is on the road, just us.

I pause to admire the shimmering river we drive by.

 

The GPS points out different routes we can take.

We can’t agree.

We all want to take different routes.

But why?

I feel the route I want would allow us to arrive most efficiently at our destination.

We take a more scenic route that has added more time to our drive.

I begin to get slightly anxious.

 

After what feels like an eternity in the car,

We arrived at the cabin.

I immediately feel the urge to go shower after the long, long ride.

 

The bathroom is quite large, everything is white.

The double doors to leave the bathroom are wide open.

Grandma and Grandpa are on the other side of the doors,

Grandma in a wheelchair and Grandpa standing next to her.

A warm light hitting their skin, both are in white.

Wait… this doesn’t make sense…

I thought Grandpa passed away 9 years ago,

Or maybe I only think that because I haven’t seen him in a while.

I look around again, this time I see my brother and my dad waiting for me to go shower.

If everyone I see is alive, then Grandpa must be too.

 

I begin taking off what seems to be endless layers of clothes.

Why am I wearing so many layers? It’s not even cold outside.

My heart begins to race a little, I feel anxious again.

How many more layers do I have to take off to finally be able to get in the shower?

I continue to grow impatient as my family continues to wait on me.

I glance at the running water:

So clean, so warm.

Oh, how I desired nothing more than to get in and finally be at ease.

 

My alarm wakes me up.

This was all a dream?

I notice my heart is still racing like a trotting horse and the impatient feeling remains.

I move on with my day-to-day activities,

With my dream vividly in the back of my mind.

 

Weeks pass,

time has only made me wonder more and more.

 

A decision for Grandma to enter hospice care at her home has been made.

 

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Two nights before Grandma passed, I began to analyze my dream just as we were taught to analyze poems in high school. I woke up with the realization that the long scenic drive through the mountains is a symbol for the journey of life and that the destination was heaven. However, to be able to see the destination or in my case the rest of the cabin, you must first go through purgatory to be cleansed from your sins. For me the endless layers of clothes are a symbol of sin and the water from the shower represents purification. You cannot be purified unless you have been absolved from all your sins. Therefore, my dream foreshadowed not only my grandmother’s death, but also her "acceptance" into heaven since she was on the other side of the double doors beside my grandfather who had come to me in a dream a year or so after his death telling me he was finally going to heaven. I say "acceptance" with quotes because, yes I had these dreams, but at the end of the day they are just dreams and only God and my grandparents know whether they made it into heaven. All of these conclusions based off my dreams are solely my interpretation.

 

Growing up I was always scared of death because I was worried about going to purgatory. Yes, I am aware everyone must go and that we have been blessed with it being the last opportunity to confess all our sins to get into the Kingdom of God, but I always had a dark visual of what purgatory looked like due to the old medieval paintings in cathedrals. I am now glad to have this less daunting visual of purgatory, whether the visual is true or not, I guess we will all find out one day, but for now I am at ease and plan to go to confession while I can here on Earth to avoid the anxiety of “holding up the line” for others. Plus, why spend more time in purgatory when you can spend more time with God by living a good Christian life?  

 

I would like to emphasize that when I had this dream grandma was well as she could have been living alone after being released prematurely to go home from rehab for some injuries. Her immediate decline in health was not in the picture, let alone her death.

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WRITTEN IN 2022 IN MEMORY OF SANDY LEE TRIPP