I saw some good things, some wonderful memories. But overriding them I saw how my mind had become the cumulative product of all I’d chosen to feed it and all the lies I’d chosen to believe. I saw how I’d betrayed my wife and children, the never-ending deceptions, the squandered opportunities. I wanted to look away but could not.

There, sitting on the threshold of joy, I felt the pangs of misery.

My mind raced through my life like a fallen leaf down powerful rapids. I thirsted for the undiscovered country that beckoned me. But I also yearned inconsolably for a second chance, an opportunity to do it all over, to make things right, starting with Marci and Amy and Brian and so many others. But I had squandered my opportunities. I had missed my chance. I wiped my eyes and stared at my feet.

Before I knew it, my companions stood around me, presumably having finished the retrospectives on their own lives.

“Come on, Nick,” Gordy called, slapping me on the back. I walked forward, now only a stone’s throw from the enormous open gates, Frodo weaving in and out between my legs as I walked.

Shad led us to the gate. After standing before a great book, he stepped into a room at the entryway, full of muddy and discarded shoes and clothes, as if it were a mud room. Shivering, Shad stripped himself of his dirty clothes. Carrying only the crown of precious stones forged in the fire, Shad walked farther in, eyes wide, through long soft grass, past a few senaba trees, and stepped into a steaming lake.

“Oh …,” Shad cried, delight rising with the steam, his arms around his body soaking in the warmth, his eyes rolling back in sheer ecstasy.

Shad splashed and laughed, so hard and so long he seemed mad with delight. His head went under the water, and he came back up again and shook the water from him like a carefree spaniel, white hair strung down between his eyes. He peered through the strands like a little boy peeking through vertical blinds. Under his mustache I saw what looked like piano ivories, a young man’s teeth.

Young? Yes. It was Shad, but he was young. His once-wrinkled body rose above the steamy water. It was smooth, muscles firm, sags and scars gone. He kept splashing and blowing bubbles and giggling. I saw others in the steaming lake too. Malaiki and Gordy swam and sucked in air as if they’d just walked out of a garbage-lined ghetto into the freshness of a mountain resort.

They looked at each other, heads bobbing above the water, and grinned and slapped each other’s hands. They laughed the laugh of insiders, those who knew the joke because they’d walked together and finally arrived together. Victoria joined them, her laughter merging with theirs.

Why haven’t I been brought in?