I died and rose up into the ether. I faced God and asked her about something that had been trailing me like a death hound for decades in the 21st-century. I said, “Why did my country spend $800 billion dollars a year on weapons and soldiers and wouldn’t pay for health care for sick people or pay for housing for people without homes?” God looked at me, her eyes blazing and her long white hair billowing like the pages of one thousand Gideon Bibles and said, “I don’t know.” Then there was a pause, an afterlife pause. At that moment, a radiant raccoon came ambling by – glancing and sniffing, his head swiveling from side to side. He stopped and turned around to look at me and said, “I don’t know either. But I understand why it made you sad and why it made you angry.” Then he turned back around and resumed his ramble along the path, pausing to munch a little clover here and there.
