Lauren Butler

Date of Award

2014

Type

Thesis

Major

English Language and Literature - Creative Writing Concentration

Degree Type

Bachelor of Arts in English/Literature with a Concentration in Creative Writing

Department

English

Abstract

A week after explaining to my sister that the agnostic sticker on the back of my car, which read "question everything," didn't mean I hated God, she walked into the front door and sat down on the futon sofa with a look on her face that meant she knew where the conversation was going. Her dogs were rambunctious and her husband soon fled out the back door and towards the shop. I asked her, "Is it you that keeps covering up my agnostic sticker?" She smiled with her eyes first and then smirked so I could tell what her answer was going to be. "Maybe," she replied. "I don't understand why you won't leave my sticker alone." I seemed to stop her in mid thought. She spat back with a little force, "I just don't get how you don't believe in God. Do you even believe in heaven?" I paused for a moment hoping to collect my rambling thoughts into a nice enough reply. Brandi was always the optimist of the family ever since Dad almost died, which I was too young to remember fully. I answered simply, "No, I don't believe in heaven." Butler 5 'But don't you wanna have a wonderful afterlife with all the people you love?" she asked me. "It's not that I don't want to believe. I just can't. There is nothing logical about a magical place where people go after living a life of hypocritical nonsense on earth. It's unrealistic. And I'm like Dad. I'm a realist." Her wheels were turning now, trying to come up with a response that might trigger something, anything, within me to become fired up. "But then your soul will burn in hell, and I want you up there with me." She smiled a little as if to lighten the subject matter. "So what do you think happens to you when you die then?" she asked. "Nothing happens. We die, and our bodies rot in the ground." I answered her with very little emotion. "But then what about your brain, and memories, don't you think they go somewhere?" "Not really, they probably die along with your body. What keeps our memories alive is those who still live to remember us."

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