Nowhere: A Region of Uncertainty in the Afterworld

By Art Marsicano

What happens when an assassinated president, a world-renowned scientist, and a brilliant writer meet over a card game in the afterlife? How have the actions of these complex, talented men determined where they are now, and what will they talk about now that theyre together?

Love and joy fill the highest region of the afterworld, while suffering and a sense of nothingness engulf the lowest. Between the two is Nowhere, a place of uncertainty where one may stay a long time, but no one stays forever. Inhabitants of Nowhere have done both extreme good and extreme evil in their lives on Earth. Many have also played important roles in world events. This novel tells a story of how John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Ernest Hemingway come together in the middle region of the afterworld. Maybe one day they will be forgiven for all their misdeeds and shortcomings. In the meantime, the three discuss everything from the investigation into Kennedys assassination to Hemingways religious views.

Then Salvatore arrives. Sal is not famous or admired around the world for anything; he is a violent Italian criminal who loves the Virgin Mary. Will he lead the group to the region of joy and love or the region of emptiness and despair? Join these four around the card table as they challenge one anothers thinking with humor and insight about such historic events as the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more, while undergoing the process determining their own ultimate fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475920451

Art Marsicano

Art Marsicano is an independent thinker about most things, especially politics, religion and history. He enjoys all things Italian and has studied their criminal organizations for many years. He has degrees from PENN STATE, Saint Francis College, and Lehigh University and is the author of five other books. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth Mary, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

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Nowhere…a region of uncertainty 

 in the afterworld

Art Marsicano

Author of Some Men Need Killing

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Nowhere

…a region of uncertainty in the afterworld

Copyright © 2012 by Art Marsicano

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-2044-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-2045-1 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-2046-8 (dj)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/25/2012

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Acknowledgements

Dedication

If purgatory exists, I shall one day find myself there with many of my friends and family. Therefore, I dedicate this book to all the souls who are waiting in purgatory, for theirs is a sad lot.

Preface

Even as a child I was drawn to Mary, although I never gave it much thought. Therefore, when I prayed it was always to the Holy Mother. I believed what I believed, until it was discovered that my wife had advanced ovarian cancer. It was in December of 2004.

Once we got past the initial shock, we turned to friends, family, and the spiritual world for strength and guidance. Christmas was only a few days off and my wife, Jean, initially believed that it would be wrong to schedule her surgery during the holiday season. The realities of her condition and medical scheduling quickly changed her mind. So, two days before Christmas the surgery was done and we prayed that it would produce a total cure although we knew it wasn’t likely.

I slept at a motel near the hospital and sat next to her bed during most of the day. The hospital complex was enormous and leading up to Christmas it became a ghost town. On the eve of Christmas, I was deeply troubled. I was sixty-one years old and had never missed attending church services on Christmas. Even as an infant, I’m certain that my mother, a devoted Greek Catholic, took me to church to celebrate the birth of Christ. She would have done nothing less. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave Jean, not even for an hour, to attend a church service. That evening it suddenly occurred to me that most hospitals have a place where people can kneel and pray. My spirits were lifted, as I rushed to find the chapel. It was on the ground floor near the center of the main building. The cavernous halls of the hospital were silent except for the sounds I made passing through them. And except for the nurses and a few patients and visitors in the surgical recovery unit where Jean was being cared for, it had been hours since I had seen anyone.

I’ll never forget what I saw when I opened the door to the chapel. Standing directly in front of me was a Roman Catholic priest. He was about to begin the Mass and approximately twenty people were seated in the pews. He gestured for me to enter and join them. I sat and immediately noticed that many of the people were crying; and there were pictures of a young man prominently displayed throughout the chapel. Before long the priest addressed the family and friends of the young man and it became clear that the Mass wasn’t intended to celebrate the birth of Christ. The young man was a patient in the hospital. He had been attacked, covered in gasoline, and set on fire. Ninety percent of his body was burned and he was given only a ten percent chance of survival.

Before the Mass ended I had internalized many of the feelings his family and friends were experiencing. I hated what had happened to him and prayed to God and Mary to save him. By the time the Mass ended, I was certain they would. I told his family the young man would survive. He did, and the last time I heard about him he was a college student.

Jean also survived. Her surgery was a success and she recovered quickly. She also tolerated six months of chemotherapy remarkably well. Shortly after the surgery, Jean asked her doctor how long she could expect to live. He was reluctant to answer, but Jean and I prodded him. Finally, he said the average survival period for someone with cancer similar to Jean’s was five years. We were happy with that. Five years seemed like such a long time, and it was far more than we expected just a few weeks earlier.

When I retired, two years before Jean’s cancer was discovered, I wondered why I was still alive. I had accomplished everything I hoped to during my career; I had two wonderful daughters and was part of a loving family; and I had designed and built a vacation lake house. So what was left? Did God and Mary have something in mind for me? Jean’s cancer and the Mass I attended the Christmas Eve after her surgery convinced me that God and Mary wanted me to help her during her final years. That’s why I was still alive. My life wasn’t to be evaluated in terms of my accomplishments. Jean was a wonderful person, and it was my responsibility to be her rock during the remaining years of her life. It seemed to me that my life up to that point was merely preparation for what was ahead—caring for Jean.

Like most people, I believe that at birth each of us is given free will. Yet I also believe that God and Mary play an important role in the lives of many people who are willing to allow them into their hearts and souls. Yes, it is an inconsistency! Moreover, throughout history many people have wrestled with it and only those blinded by their religion are fully satisfied by the numerous attempts to explain it with tortured arguments that lack logic and reason.

My writing, even when I write fiction about violent Italian criminals, flows not just from my mind. My heart and soul play a part. Inspiration for my writing comes from real world events, those I’ve learned of and others I’ve witnessed. Yet God, and more often Mary, can be found in my words. The reader can find them because they are always there!

It is now more than six years since I entered the hospital’s chapel on Christmas Eve just as a Roman Catholic Mass was about to begin. I often think of it because in my entire life it is the most surprising thing to ever happen to me. I also believe it is the most important event in my life because it confirmed so much of what I believe and what I am. I’m certain God and Mary are responsible for it all coming together. Jean’s illness, a young man near death because of a vicious attack, and my despair over my wife’s condition coupled with my guilt about missing the celebration of the birth of Jesus, all brought my life into focus in ways that are difficult to describe.

Although we had far different views of the spiritual world, Jean and I looked to God, Mary, and other holy ones to help us during her battle with cancer. Yet not only did we find strength and wisdom; we shared experiences based upon physical realities that we believed connected us to the spiritual world. Prior to the Mass in the hospital’s chapel on Christmas Eve, neither Jean nor I ever had an experience that we attributed to God, Mary, the holy ones, or to the spiritual world. After the Mass, we had several, although a skeptic might dismiss them as illusions that emerged from our fear or anxiety.

Eighteen months after Jean’s cancer was discovered, I started writing a book, my first, about events and my reactions to them during the period that began six months prior to the time of the cancer diagnosis. Writing it was emotionally painful, and I’m still unable to read portions of it without crying. Yet the greatest difficulty I faced didn’t come from my heart or my mind. It came from my soul. My beliefs and feelings about God and Mary made it impossible for me to arrange the material coherently. One evening, after working on the book for two months with little to show for it, I decided to write a short statement describing my spiritual beliefs. It described the universal Deity I know and believe in and is presented below.

God Was There

At the beginning of the long march of history, humanity searched for the meaning of its existence and found God, an eternal presence greater than all that was.

Four thousand years ago God was there when the most enduring of religions began in a region that came to be known as the Holy Lands.

God was there when the Romans crucified a holy man and when his followers spread his teachings and the record of his life and death.

God was there when Mohammed wrote the inspired words of the Quran and with those who spread Islam across Africa and the Middle East. And God was there as Islam threatened Christian Europe.

God was there when the Christians discovered and seized the New World and was there when they destroyed the cultures of that world and did it in the name of Christ.

God was there when a great man said, This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, as part of an address that has inspired many as it echoes through the ages.

God was there in the heart and soul of Mahatma Gandhi when he organized a brilliant non-violent resistance against British occupation of his beloved India and when he said: I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and Confucian.

God was there when the world built by communist atheists collapsed when confronted by demands for justice relentlessly pursued by three men of God: a Pope who will one day be a saint, an American President who loved to smile, and a humble Polish union member. Earlier, God was there when the Pope and the President miraculously survived assassin bullets.

God was there when Islamic terrorists murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil. Their God was a God of Hate that has never been able to defeat the God of Love.

God was there, God will always be there, and those who do not accept God will not find peace in this world or the next.

Once I wrote God Was There, the words began to flow. Before long The Last Two Years was completed.

From the beginning of Jean’s battle with cancer, we decided to enjoy life. Only God knew how much time she had left, but we both knew her days were numbered. So we used them wisely. Jean learned to make jewelry and before long she was selling Courageous Chic jewelry and giving the money to charity, especially those that helped cancer victims and their caregivers. She also developed a knack for creating wall art using mostly shells, glass, sand dollars, and other things we found on the beautiful beaches of South Carolina. Soon she was selling Jewels of the Sea artwork and giving the income to charity. For my part, I wrote two novels about Italian criminals. My books never generated as much income as Jean’s jewelry and artwork. Nevertheless, I gave all the income derived from the books to charity.

For several years writing became my obsession, perhaps because it helped me maintain my sanity as the evil within Jean’s body slowly took her life. Oh God, how I hate writing those words. I still feel, on some level, that her cancer had an evil soul that could be hated but never defeated. Jean felt the same way although she tried, until the last few months of her life, to rally the forces of the natural and spiritual worlds to her side. There’s no doubt that they helped her, as they did me. Seeking and finding them also gave us incredible joy.

During Jean’s five-year struggle there were many times when she was strong and appeared to be in good health. We loved South Carolina and when she was up to it we’d go there and spend hours on the beach. She was especially drawn to a place where three small creeks come together and flow into the ocean. She said it was her power point. It’s a unique place that not only attracts people. I’ve seen dolphins, rays, osprey, and bald eagles there.

One day while Jean stood there and experienced the power of the place, an elderly man approached her and they began to talk. Before long they were discussing God, the spiritual world, and her illness. Jean found inspiration and a sense of peace in his words and afterward told me that he was her guardian angel. Approximately eighteen months later Jean and I were walking to Stanley Park, an incredibly beautiful natural area on the edge of Vancouver, British Columbia, when a young woman with an Irish accent walked up to Jean and gave her a handmade necklace made with an assortment of gems. It was much like the jewelry Jean made. She immediately