Golfing with Joe in Heaven: A Mythic Whimsy

The doctors said something is growing on my brain. It doesn’t belong there. I’m thinking about life and death, cancer and treatments, and all that sort of morbid/hope stuff.

Memory takes me to a little daydream. An afterlife scene. Granted, whatever might or might not be beyond death, it cannot be like this. For a United Methodist minister, I’m rather agnostic about it. I do believe there is more to our lives and the kindom of God that Jesus offers transcends time and space. But it is about the way we ought to live in the here and now. My whimsy is mythic, taking earthly substance. Let’s admit it is too corporeal to be anything more than whimsical story. Then again, it is my daydream and I shall share it with you regardless.

~~~

I was remembering Randy “Joe” and his brain cancer struggles. So, let me tell you a bit about the friend I knew as Joe, although his name was Randy. Don’t ask me why he was Joe in our little circle. That’s just the way it was. Joe was the guy who got my jokes. I occasionally offered some bit of light humor within a Sunday sermon. Most of the folks in the pews would give me that look that says, “What’s he talking about now?” Joe would burst out laughing. I could love the guy for that alone. But there was so much more as he battled brain cancer while he kept on being Joe. He loved to lead games with the kids at our annual worship and picnic in Washoe Park. After he died, we named the event “The Randy Joe N___ Memorial Picnic.”

Joe was determined to teach me how to play a reasonable game of golf, in spite of the cancer that was gradually taking him down. So, we went golfing. Not yet fifty years old, seizures forced Joe to give up driving a car, so I would drive us out to the Country Club. Joe borrowed Sparky’s golf cart and, on the fairway, he had the fun of being in the driver’s seat again.

~~~

I’m thinking about life and death and brain cancer. Now that I know how nasty my tumors are, I dream a whimsy of something more, completely incomprehensible. My thoughts add a texture, an earthly reality to my picture of an Other Side. We know that Joe left this life when the cancer took it. His victory over the disease came with passing to that something beyond. It is not at all clear in my imagining whether my brain tumors will take me away, or something else. That doesn’t matter, anyway.

I dream my arrival at those pearly gates. Except there is no gate in my vision – only wide open, lightness of cloud and green grass. Green grass. A fairway. Tee blocks labeled “1” in front of me. A green with number flag is a reasonable distance off to my right. I see it clearly even in right peripheral vison. The right-side blindness more than fixed. My eyes are working the way they used to before my cancer invasion.

A friend appears. “Well, JOE. Hey, what’s up? This can’t be the place where I belong. I don’t play golf. You know that.”  Joe is carrying two golf bags, two full set of clubs, one over each shoulder. He beckons me to join him on the tee block.
I look down the long fairway: slight jog to the right about two-thirds distance to the hole. To me, the green feels as if it is a very long distance away. “Five par?” I ask.
“Nah. This one is a modest four par. How long has it been since you played a round?”

“Years and years. The clubs you left with me on long term loan are probably still in a crawl space making a home for spiders and mice.”

“Oh, Kent. That’s sad. Now we’re gonna play.”

​“I think maybe the last time I attempted gowf might’ve been the day we did the four practice holes at The Old Works. Either that or I played nine with Bill at Anaconda Country Club.”

“Bill? Do I know him? I’ve known many Williams.”

“I don’t know. He lives in Opportunity. Just another friend. Bill tried to make me a golfer, too. He didn’t get very far either.”

“Who’s the best teacher, me or Bill?”

“My twist of the wrist is totally resistant to all good instruction or advice.”

“Let’s play 18. Then we’ll see.”

“18 holes? This could take me a week.”

“Nah. We’ll get it in before dark.”

“Does it ever get dark here?”

Joe didn’t answer; he merely shrugged and set his tee. His drive flew straight down the fairway about half the distance to the number one green. As he pulled the driver from my bag and handed me an orange ball and tee, he said, “See. It’s not such a long hole.”
I teed up, whacked the ball, topping it such that it skittered along the grass about twenty yards.

“Well, you’re still on the fairway, so that’s good,” Joe chuckled his encouraging word.

I managed to get my three wood to address the ball solidly, but with at wrist twist I found myself in a dense rough that only appeared when my ball sliced that way. “Where’d that Aspen grove come from? What kind of trickery is this?”

Joe shrugged again and laughed.

​In that way, in my mythic whimsy dream, we played all eighteen holes. Joe played golf. I played goof. I stopped counting strokes after the fifth hole but my score for the day had to be over two hundred.  Between swapping lies, telIing bad jokes (some of them clean), we spent the day looking for my ball. Joe carefully watched my body language. After we finished all those meager golf strokes, a driving range appeared out of nowhere along with a large bucket of good quality golf balls. Joe gave me a couple good tips from his observations. I practiced and did a little better. Then we found our way to a small clubhouse, where we stored clubs in large lockers with our names on them—the only lockers in sight. As we drank a beer, an actual beer, and ate cheeseburgers, I asked, “You’re not really going to make a golfer out of me, are you? I mean, really, is there any hope.”

Joe murmured his answer. I heard what he said, although he spoke quietly. I touched my ears expecting to discover that my hearing aids had somehow come with me. Nope. I could hear again. Joe simply said, “We’ve got time.”