Advice Column

Dear _________: I am not suicidal, but I do think about death, in the sense of what happens when one dies. I believe in the heaven-and-hell theory. Although I’m not sure I want to go to heaven, I AM sure I don’t want to go to hell. My reason for not wanting to go to heaven is because of the relatives who have gone before me. I come from a very abusive family but, like so many, most of them have been able to do what I call the “last-minute redemption.” With that in mind, I do not want to spend all of eternity with the same people I could not wait to have exit this Earth. I am also not a big believer in this forgiveness thing — forgiving adults who do these things to children and expect them to forget about it. I sure haven’t, and I never will! Do you, or the clergy, think it’s possible for God to just let some of us sleep through eternity without meeting up with family on “the other side”?