My Side of the River

by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

After class, I thought about my grandfather and my father. I thought about their lack of faith. They believed in the big bang and science and in the idea that death is final. For a long time, I pictured heaven to be a place full of the people one loves. At that moment, I made up my mind. I decided that I didn’t want to go to a heaven where the faithless will not be welcome; I decided that a heaven without my father and grandfather would be something closer to hell.

It seemed to me that the institution of religion was as fickle and divisive as the institution that enacts anti-immigration laws, both separating families on earth as it is in heaven.