Big Tent Prompt: based on poem from Referential Magazine

This is based on What I've Forgotten by Cal Nordt


What He Remembered

It had been several years,
since Dad had remembered my name
and the names of my four sisters.
Dad and I were walking in his garden
where he once planted bushels of potatoes,
rows and rows of corn,
tomatoes, beans, onions, peppers
to feed his family.
Now it was a field of grass
and a few persistent flowers
Mom planted years ago.

He stopped suddenly,
gazing into the woods, saying
“They’re playing in there.
They’re going to scratch themselves!”
I waited for him while he called his children.
“Kathy, Judy, Linda, Connie, Karen!”
He said them in birth order.
Then somehow satisfied his girls were okay,
we walked back to the house.

When we stand in heaven,
will all those things
stored and forgotten
just pop to the surface
like our names did
that moment with Dad?

Or will it be more like
a fetus in the womb?--
one day floating around in amniotic fluid,
cozy and warm, and then
in the bustle of birth,
the discovery and learning of life,
those first nine months of being
become not even a memory.

Will heaven be the real thing,
while this life here
will seem like bumping around
waiting to be born?