You Can Fly With An Eternity Attitude At A Heavenly Altitude

The old man was generous to a fault, had raised a passle of kids, and loved even more grandkids. He and one son-in-law, though so different in age, had shared the experience of serving their country, he in combat in WWII in the Pacific and the son-in-law serving stateside during the Vietnam War. The son-in-law had an unspoken respect for the old man and sometimes marvelled at the old man’s dedication to his wife and family. Often, when the son-in-law would say something cynical, uncharitable, arrogant, or ridiculing someone else, the old man would tell him “You don’t have the right altitude.” Not “attitude,” but “altitude.”

The son-in-law’s father had died at a relatively young age, before the son-in-law’s children were toddlers. Once he told the old man “You’re grandfather enough for two grandfathers for these kids,” but what he didn’t tell him was that he was also a father for the son-in-law.

The old man had the right altitude. He didn’t really care about material things. He ranched several hundred acres and worked hard every day until he was over seventy-five years old. He didn’t drive expensive cars; he didn’t have annual vacations; he didn’t go on round-the-world cruises; he didn’t belong to a country club; he didn’t drop names of important people he knew because, in the world’s terms, he didn’t know any; and he didn’t say “maybe”—“yes” was yes, “no” was “no”, and his word was all you needed. He gave everything he had to his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren and to anyone who needed his help. He gave away everything, and he took everything with him when he died.

The old man prayed all the time, tried to get in fifteen decades of the rosary every day and the chaplet of mercy as often as he could, on his knees whenever he could kneel. Sometimes the son-in-law found it tedious when the old man would say “Let’s say one more rosary.” The old man meant it every time he said, “Have mercy on us and on the whole world;” and the son-in-law knew that “us” included him. On what turned out to be one of their last fishing trips together, the old man confided in the son-in-law that the reason he caught the biggest fish and more fish than anyone else was that he silently prayed the Hail Mary over and over while he popped a cork, watched a bobber, or felt a fish nibbling at his bait.

The old man was away from home staying with family when he died. When the son-in-law arrived, the old man had just died, peacefully with a rosary in his hand. Thinking that the old man must have said, “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,” a million times, the son-in-law thought now, for sure, the old man is at the right altitude, right up there with the angels.

The next morning, before the trip home, the morticians had the old man’s body ready to transport for the funeral and burial later that week. Some of the family members who were going to daily Mass asked if the casket could be present in the little local parish church so the old man could be at daily Mass with them. Before Mass the casket was opened and the son-in-law saw that there was something wrong, there was no rosary in the old man’s hands. The son-in-law asked the mother-in-law if she wanted the old man to have a rosary. She said “Yes”, and the son-in-law reached in his pocket and gave her one that the old man had given him. She tenderly placed it in the old man’s hands.

Some years ago, on a bitter cold Thanksgiving day, the son-in-law had taken a picture of the old man standing up on his corral fence, looking old and grizzled and tough. After the old man died, the son-in-law put the picture on his refrigerator door, and added the words from St. John Marie Vianney: “The eyes of the world see no further than this life, but the eyes of the Christian see deep into eternity.” What the old man did in his life, what the son-in-law saw over and over again, and what the old man prayed for ceaselessly echoed the words of this saint.

The son-in-law had never consciously in his heart said, “I want to be with God and I want to go to Heaven.” Never. The son-in-law had decided to place the absolute minimum bet in “Pascal’s Wager.” Pascal, math genius and philosopher during medieval times, had come up with the idea that it made rational sense to live a good life even if you did not believe in an afterlife; that one should “bet” that there is a Heaven with one’s good deeds and virtuous acts, because the potential “winnings” if Heaven existed were so great—infinite joy and happiness forever. The son-in-law thought in terms of just squeaking in to purgatory, not Heaven, getting away with many sins and going to confession regularly, saying with real meaning that part of the Act Of Contrition “and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments” while rushing through “but most of all because they offend Thee my God.” Part of the squeaking-into-purgatory plan was accepting that he might be there suffering until the final judgment, but at least he would make it. He remembered the nuns in grade school telling him that if he was in Heaven he would be perfectly happy, but some folks might have more happiness than others. What good you did here on earth by acts of virtue would determine how much “happy” you would have in Heaven. They used the analogy of people having different size containers for water, all of them full, but some would have a huge tank, some a pitcher, some a small glass. He decided if he just had a thimble, and it was full, that would be fine for all eternity. It wasn’t just a bad altitude, the son-in-law had spiritually grounded himself.

But the old man’s life and death were his wake-up call. He realized that for so long he had been dead wrong about what mattered—family, eternity, love, and the “four last things,” death, judgment, heaven and hell. Every day the son-in-law sees the old man’s picture and he remembers. Now the son-in-law adds this to his daily Act Of Contrition: “I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to sin no more, to avoid the near occasions of sin, and to try to live a life of virtue to be with You forever in Heaven.” And he looks forward to someday hearing the old man say to him, “Well, now you’ve got a great altitude.”

Written by Guy McClung, the son-in-law.

Guy McClung lives with his wife of 41+ years in San Antonio TX where he practices patent law, helping inventors develop and patent their inventions. Guy has a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Law from Rice University and a J.D. from the University of Texas Law School. Following two stints in the seminary with the missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, total 5 years, he came to the realization that God was not calling him to that type of vowed obedience; so he left the seminary and got married. Five children and seven grandchildren later, he decided to try to write some words that would convey his thanks to God almighty for blessing after blessing after blessing.