Purgatory's Waiting Room

Here I sit, a shade of my former self. How long have I been here? I’ve lost all track of time. I thought that I would find peace, rest and above all, quiet. If I had only known the truth of it, I am not sure I would be here now.

“I guess you are wondering where I am at?” I sit awaiting my eternal judgment, in Purgatory's Waiting Room.

It is an endless room, styled somewhat like a high school gym. The paint on the walls is a gray-green color; the color used in older mental hospitals that was supposed to promote calm. The paint near the bottom of the thick walls is peeling and I suspect it is a lead paint. Ironic something that caused such devastation in life is here.

There are different areas in the room. Some are setup like little living areas facing a large wall full of what looks like TV’s screens that show every remote section of earth and all that is happening everywhere among the living. Another area plays music, each song jumping to a new type of music, if you were to listen long enough you could actually hear the repetitions in the songs. There are also areas where several are standing in groups talking among themselves.

On occasion, there are the noble busy bodies that have to come and sit down next to me and insistently talk. Those are on the verge of rude as they compare their death and life with mine or what they believe mine was. Eventually they go away, for me the sooner the better. I have been in every part of this place, eventually I found a place with a recliner and here I now sit waiting for what may come.

Upon my arrival, the staff forced me into “sessions” so they could to try to find out why I was here. The funny thing is that I do not remember my death. Most people here seem to know what happened or they are in total denial of being dead. The latter are rather amusing after being here for so long. The most amusing being the adolescents. They tend to go right on acting as if they were alive, well at least until they have had their first sessions.

The sessions I went through were a bit like therapy sessions; all the way down to the couches and the person in the chair taking notes. For my sessions, they concentrated on how I "felt" when I was alive. What they "felt" lead up to my death. All I could tell them is that I "felt" disposable. I had "felt" like I had served my purpose. I could not tell them exactly what that purpose was or why I had "felt" that way.

The one thing that is a definite improvement over living was I did not have a body. That meant I was no longer fat, short, tired or had any pain. It is like being numb all over. I could choose how I looked. The drawback was that now I had nothing to do except think. The mind is not the same without the body, you can think in so many different directions. Logic is different when you’re not tied to a body. It actually takes a while to become accustomed to the working of your own mind. So many thoughts can come and go, when you have no end of time. I have figured out how to quiet my mind or ignore it and make myself into something resembling a drifting cloud.

There is no work to worry about, hurrying to or from, no meals to prepare no sorrow to feel. That also means no jubilance. I know it probably sounds rather boring, except you do not feel that either. You do still love the people you loved before, although you feel it through a fog, as if it is distant.

I am sure that you are wondering if I have “met up with” anyone, I knew. If I have, I did not recognize them. Luckily they are not waiting; they are wherever they are supposed to be. I feel like I did in life. Stuck in the machine waiting for decisions to determine where, when, and how I am supposed to be. In the mean time, I sit adrift in this waiting room while for the living time marches on.