Death and The Sharper Image

I used to believe that when you died, BAM!, you found yourself in either heaven or hell.  Automatically. 

Now, every ghost-hunting show I watch - and I watch them all - tell me that you have to find your way to heaven. Ghosts, it seems, are  those departed who either don't realize they're dead or don't know the way to go to get to heaven.

First, this hardly seems fair.  I mean, I've lived the good life (we're talking hypothetically here) and earned my way to the Pearly Gates.  Can't you send a car for me?  I didn't realize that death was going to be just as much a hassle as life was.

Secondly, I've spent a lot of time watching the living attempt to follow direction and they're not very good at it. They don't  have to be.  Everything is done for them.  Cars park themselves.  Drinks tell them when they're cold.   And Navigation systems give them turn by turn verbal instructions so that they're never lost.  I have yet to hear a ghost-hunter mention any kind of Death-Navi.  (Patent Pending)

Can you imagine that when you die, you're handed a wrinkled, mis-folded Esso road map from 1970 and told Heaven is at G2?  Or  worse, when we die we find ourselves at a mall directory. "You Are Here." And according to the guide, Heaven is in the upper  level near Lord & Taylor, right next to the Sunglass Hut?

The problem is, dead time and living time are not nearly in sync.   So while you just spent three minutes of dead time locating Heaven in the mall directory, you unwittingly made the spot where you died a haunted attraction for the last four hundred years.  Ghost hunters with tape recorders have captured other-worldly voices saying, "What exactly is Build A Bear?"

All of this begs the question, if we can get lost finding our way to heaven, can we do the same if we're damned to hell?  I  can imagine the demon who has come for me waving a wrought iron collar from a long chain while standing near the portal to  hell, "It's over here.  You know damned well where you're going."

You knowingly wink at the camera pretending not to notice. "Did you hear something?", you feign, as you push all the  doors you KNOW are not the portal to hell.

The demon shakes his head, "You know, it's this sort of behavior that sent you here to begin with."