Episode 37 – Messages from Beyond the Will.

Messages from Beyond the Will – Live from Cloud 5.55.

Where the weather is calm but the family drama below is anything but! It’s 5.55 a.m. celestial time and our dearly departed patriarch is settled into his cloud-lounger, robe tied, slippers fluffed and the kettle just off the boil.

He peers down at Faurel Hill, sipping his tea with a raised brow and a steady sigh. ‘Would you look at the shenanigans’, he mutters, nudging Saint Brigid who’s crocheting in the next cloud over. ‘Another turf war?’ she asks without looking up.

‘No turf left’, he replies. ‘They’re fighting over principle now’. He adjusts the dial on his Heavenly Vision Viewer – currently tuned into The Bold and the Belligerent: Faurel Hill Edition.

Below, Bully Yates is performing a full interpretive dance of indignation in the garden, the executors are playing hide-and-seek with legal responsibilities and there’s a mysterious camera pointed at a gate no one uses. Dad squints. ‘I swear, if I had known it would turn into this, I’d have buried the will in the bog and left a map under the dog bowl’. He pulls out his clipboard – yes, they have those in the afterlife – and adds a few notes for the ‘Afterlife Suggestion Box’:

Next time:

Fewer heirs, more common sense.

Consider leaving behind a flowchart.

Enforce a No Drama Clause.

Make tea compulsory at all family meetings.

He changes the channel briefly to check on Uncle Paddy – who’s still arguing with St. Peter about why he should be allowed to smoke in eternity – but comes right back to Faurel Hill.

‘Ah, here we go. She’s writing again. Good. That one’s got spirit. And humor. And the boots to match’. Then, with a huff and a minor puff of holy frustration, he adjusts the telescope again.

‘Ah, there’s Bully, stomping around like he’s in charge of Heaven and Earth. Still allergic to manners, I see’.

He tilts the telescope slightly. ‘And herself is at it too. My daughter, the Duchess of Delusion. Last time she lifted a finger, it was to point blame’. She is so busy perfecting her outer dazzle to the world, you wonder if her inner world is a chic penthouse she’s too fabulous to visit!

He scribbles something new on the celestial clipboard: ‘Note to self: next life, install a common sense detector at the reading of the will’. As the kettle whistles again (yes, even in the afterlife, tea waits for no man), he leans back with a soft smile. The show below might be a circus but he knows there’s still sense in the family- just not always in the ones shouting loudest.

He whispers through the veil, just loud enough for the right ears to hear:

To you: ‘Keep writing, girl. You’ve got the spirit I hoped would grow here, even if the weeds are thick’.

To your other brother (the quiet one, the steady one): ‘I see you keeping your head down and your boots clean. Thank you for not adding fuel to the fire or turf to the tantrums’.

And with that, he taps his mug, floats a bit higher and mutters, ‘Now if only I’d left instructions on how to behave like decent humans… ah well, hindsight’s 20/20 in Heaven’.

Lesson of the Day: (as dictated by Dad, RIP but not silent): You can divide the land, the house and the hedge but if you lose your sense of humor and your decency, you’ve lost more than any will could give you.

So settle your squabbles, plant some spuds and for God’s sake, stop sending the solicitor another 17 emails – he’s on a yacht somewhere.