How far is heaven? Well, one group of boys wanted to know so badly they crooned those words into an iconic pop song that still reverberates in my mind. The title words are the only ones I can remember and as far as I know, they never answered the question. Our quest for nirvana, is a universal and timeless pursuit that we just can’t seem to figure out. Some religions hope to settle the question, but for as much as I attend church, the whole eternal salvation idea seems somewhat overwhelming. I’m not really sure how it will play out and frankly I don’t think I want to. I mean, I have a hard enough time just making it through the day, having to live another one of my lives, is just not fair. I would be more content for reincarnation, maybe as a less advanced primate, a chimp or even better, how about a lemur?
If the route to heaven through the afterlife seems tricky just try finding it here. Entrenched with consumerism, we do a pretty good job at convincing ourselves that heaven on earth is in some exotic location like a beach on Antigua at sunset or even better at Bloomingdale's where on the clearance clearance rack every item is your perfect size. In fact, I think I’ve just convinced myself. Some of us don’t have the need to travel to far and distant lands like New York City for a slice of utopia, a Saudi supporting SUV or a home which would house fifteen families in Calcutta seems be the divine manifestation we are looking for.
For Jay and Heather, heaven on earth, is simply the end to a five and half year wait. An end that means in Mormon suburbia they won’t be the only childless couple on the block. It’s an end for Heather having to sit through a Mother’s Day church program with a hundred children half singing and half screaming "Mother, I Love You" to all the other women but her and smiling so she doesn’t cry. The end for Jay asking God why every woman in the neighborhood, but his wife, can bear children like a litter of puppies. Their wait climaxed as Heather was taken from Jay's arms and the pool of blood that surrounded her by his fellow EMT's. As she was airlifted away, he could not help but wonder what would become of his life. Endless prayers concluded with a dream that was finally realized with the birth of a beautiful baby girl.
When I went to do this shoot, I felt the bliss and serenity of their celebration envelope me and for a moment I was able to forget that my fridge was empty as usual, my eight year old son had two hours to do a lengthy book report plus twelve pages of make-up work, my hard drive was dead and all my photos were MIA, that our political system appears hopelessly irredeemable, that billions of humans, other than myself, face poverty, hunger, and warfare on a daily basis, and that the purposeful destruction our habitat has become our own ironic damnation (Dante, anyone?).
In the revolution and rotation of the third rock from the sun where billions of lives breathe, there in that home in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, all of the chaos of life faded away and the only thing that mattered was this one human baby and the love of her parents. It’s moments like that give my little mortal brain a glimpse of what heaven might really be like. Who knows, in another a hundred years most lemurs will probably be zoos.
