Heaven and Hell

I can feel the ground shaking beneath us. I can almost sense the frailty of the world on which we stand. Soon, that world, in ways that I cannot comprehend, will disappear forever.
In stark contrast to the immeasurable fear that I now feel in these final moments, the scenery is, for lack of a better word, beautiful. The sunset...the last sunset my family will ever see...is almost too picturesque to be believable. I wish I could describe this. Just the sight of it is actually making me tear up for the first time since she died, but judging by the ferocity of that last tremor, I'd say I don't have much time left.
My son and daughter are on either side of me. We're sitting on a cliff edge next to a waterfall that I used to hike around when I was a kid. The graffiti that used to be here seems to have been chipped away by the tremors. I'm okay with this. The graffiti may have made for some interesting Photoshop experiments, but it wouldn't have been what I wanted to see on my last night on earth.
I'd been quite blunt with my children's upbringing, so they most likely know as well as I do that we're all about to die. Right now, the way my son is gazing pensively into the distance, I feel as though he's somehow less fearful than I am. Perhaps he thinks that this whole thing is some elaborate joke. Nah, he's smarter than that.
My little girl is far from ignorant too. Not to mention, she's been as tough as nails since the day she was born. But now I can see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. It feels like I'm seeing her cry for the first time in her life. In some ways, the sight of her tears is more heart-wrenching than the fact that I'll never see her again. I'm starting to tear up a little bit again...
Like me, my kids were taught to see the world from all it's peoples' perspectives, so they know of the possibility of an afterlife, and they know the atheists' take on things. To this day though, we had all remained for the most part undecided. Right now, I'm kinda hoping there is an afterlife. Maybe we can all be together as a family again. I wonder if my children are thinking the same thing; perhaps they're wondering if we can have that Super Smash Brothers tournament that was supposed to happen yesterday.
Turning back to the sunset, which is almost over, I can feel more tremors. Not from the ground, but from my little girl. She's crying...a lot.
I almost started crying along with her. You know that constricted feeling in your throat that you get when you're trying to hold back a raging cry-fest? Yeah...that's happening.
Steadying myself, I try to tell her that there's nothing to worry about. Our family had always thrived on the adventure of exploring the unknown; hiking around this waterfall, horse-back riding in the rain-forests of Costa Rica, scuba diving around the sunken pier in Maui. For us, death would be our last great adventure. Whatever we may find on that adventure, only God knows...if He does in fact exist.
To be honest, telling her that did very little to calm her down. It didn't help me in any way either. I wonder, why do we fear death as we do anyway? It's ironic that we revel in the possibilities of discovering the unknown, but with death, we'd rather not think about it.
Either way, I hope that my last words to my kids weren't complete bullshit.
Looking into my daughter's eyes for...the last time as it turns out, I see what I had been dreading for the past four hours reflected in her eyes. She's now looking directly at it, so I pull her face back towards me and hold her tight.
...you know, I'm almost glad that all this waiting is over. But still, I was really enjoying that scenery.
My son is holding my hand, and squeezing...as though he's promising never to let go. I squeeze back. I feel the ground shaking even more now. I can no longer hear the waterfall next to us. I feel the wind picking up. It's now getting quite hot. I can feel my head buzzing. The buzzing is getting duller. Quieter.
.........