I’ll be dead soon — hopefully not too soon but sooner than I expect. I’d like to see my grandkids grow up a bit more, but the fact is that I have less time ahead of me than I do behind.
So I should start planning for the afterlife. What happens when I’m dead? According to what I hear at church, it will come with a lot of lamenting on my part.
See, I don’t plan to make the Celestial Kingdom, which is the top of level of heaven, according to Latter-day Saint doctrine, and where Heavenly Father and Jesus dwell.
I’ll be lucky if I make either of the next two levels — the Terrestrial (the burbs) or the Telestial (the county landfill) Kingdom (aka hell).
Since I won’t be going to the Celestial Kingdom, I’ll almost certainly end up as a ministering spirit — meaning I’ll need a job for eternity.
The problem is experience. The only things I’ve ever done for any length of time are police work and writing.
I’m banking on the need for cops in the next life. Satan will need help keeping the damned in hell, and heaven will need cops to enforce what will have to be some ridiculously strict HOA rules.
I can’t imagine a more boring afterlife job than being a member of the CKPD (Celestial Kingdom Police Department), where a major crime wave would be a stray unicorn or a lost halo.
Who in their right mind would want to walk a beat on streets of gold and keep safe inhabitants who clearly think they’re better than you? Not me.
Given my druthers — and assuming I pass the test — I’d rather work the night watch for the Hades Police Department, where the streets are all on fire and there’s no air conditioning in the patrol cars.
Sounds awful, I know. But on the upside, excessive force is not only necessary but also strongly encouraged.
If some trespassing lesser demon gave me attitude, I could beat his horns back inside his head and not have to worry about the Devil Review Board. Hell, I might even get a medal.
Then again, based on my mortal experience, the supervisors for HPD are probably real jerks. Imagine being written up for driving a patrol car that was “insufficiently filthy.”
One smart retort and I’d be back working in the jail, administering body cavity searches to the likes of Hitler, Stalin and the person who invented telemarketing.
Maybe I should just take the test for Terrestrial Kingdom PD. It’s not gloriously dull but also not damnably painful.
In this middle Mormon version of the afterlife, I might be able to catch a glimpse of people I like. As for work, there would be the occasional parking violation, shoplifting and failure-to-appear warrant services.
The work at Terrestrial PD would be understandably light because no one wants to get kicked out. There’s nowhere to go but down.
Truthfully, I don’t think I’d work out as an afterlife cop in any of the three degrees of glory. It’s far more likely that I’ll end up writing news releases for Beelzebub, which a lot of people think I do already.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
