Wally liked stuff, material things. One might say that he hoarded abundance. Toward the end of life, his wife, friends, neighbors, pretty much everyone who knew and loved him, offered the same advice: get rid of some of that stuff, spend a bit of your hard earned money, have a little fun. Because you can't take it with you.

He knew they were right, but he just could not let go of his worldly goods; those precious and wonderful things that he had struggled so long and hard to obtain, and thus felt were duly his, for eternity.

So when he died that day—not suddenly, but as part of a long slow decline in his health and well being, Wally still had most of what he had been told that he could never take with him.

He was about to find out if his friends and neighbors had been right after all, about what he could and could not bring with him to the afterlife.

And so it was that Wally came to be (or in this case, not to be) deader than a Texas salad bar, pushing up bluebonnets, gone to the big ranch in the sky. At first the “being dead” experience was mostly what he expected. The tunnel and the white light drawing him forward. The amazing tranquility. He followed that light and came out the other side of the tube but was nevertheless very surprised to see that there were indeed actual pearly gates and even a guy with a long white beard seated in what looked like a director's chair, shepherding a steady stream of dead people coming through. In no time at all, because there is no concept of time in the afterlife, it was Wally's turn to approach the man with the beard, St. Peter.

Given that St. Peter’s job was to greet and screen the literally millions of people who passed on every year (and some of them were a bit pushy about breaking through that rope line there and getting on with that Heaven thing) he was a lot more chill than Wally had expected. Even under that kind of pressure, Peter welcomed Wally with a great big bear hug; and one does not know how good a bear hug can feel until he has been bear-hugged by St. Peter himself. It was out of this world. Presently (because all things are “present” in the afterlife) St. Peter asked Wally what he wanted most as he was about to enter Heaven.

Wally did not have to ponder this too long. “Why,” he replied, “I would like to take it with me!”

“What, specifically?” inquired St. Peter.

“Everything! My cars, my boat, my Italian suits that no longer fit. I assume since this is heaven, they will fit perfectly again. The complete contents of my wine cellar, even that Cohiba cigar I have been saving for a special occasion, despite everyone trying to get me to smoke it because, after all, you can’t take it with you.”

St. Peter immediately replied, “Of course! This is Heaven, and they don't call it that for nothing. Bring anything you want. We will send down some cherubs to fetch all of your good stuff right away.”

Wally was both incredulous and overwhelmed with delight. “So, St. Peter, were all of those people back in the real world wrong after all? Is it true that you ACTUALLY CAN take it with you?”

“Oh yes!” exclaimed Peter with a beatific grin. “Where do you think you are? This is Heaven, for God's sake. All hopes are fulfilled.”

With this, Wally passed through the Pearly Gates into Heaven. And it was just like he would have hoped and prayed for, if he had ever actually prayed. Wally surmised that hope alone must have sufficed because after all, here he was, in Heaven—more beautiful than all imagination—with all of his stuff, including his Cohiba cigar, which he was told could be lit and smoked and would never burn down.

As Wally sat in his favourite leather easy chair (which he had also been told he should donate to the Salvation Army, because he could never take that with him either) he felt a certain sadness for those left behind. Not because he missed them very much. After all, this was friggin’ Heaven and they were still living down “there”—a proverbial dump compared to this. Rather, it was because he kinda felt sorry for them. Somehow, they had been convinced that they should share all of their possessions, spend their savings, do good in the world, because, after all, they could not take it with them. What a waste! They’d end up pissing it all away, when they could have set themselves up so nicely in the afterlife. With this “revelation”, Wally surmised that Hell was living under the illusion that you should be generous and sacrifice under the mistaken assumption that you could not take it with you.

And so it went. Wally's heavenly bliss lasted exactly one earth day, which he thought might have really been thousands of years, because there is no concept of time in Heaven. But no. It really was just one day. He knew this because the Rolex watch they’d all said he could not take with him (but he did) indicated one day had passed on its elegant, polished dial. Who knew Rolexes worked even in Heaven?

What came next was a real bummer and should have been his first indication that things might not continue to be so heavenly. First, the Rolex vanished, right off his wrist. Then other possessions which the cherubs, his cute little angelic Sherpas, had hauled up to Heaven for him, started to dematerialize right before his very eyes. Puffs of smoke, whiffs of incense, blinks of the third eye, the invisible hand of God urgently waving like some traffic signaller in Bangkok. In all of this smoke, incense, blinking and hand waving, that which he had taken with him to Heaven was suddenly gone. Just as suddenly, he too followed his worldly treasures to a new place, but was relieved when he landed there to be still surrounded by all the loot that he had been told he could not take with him.

The thud of his landing disoriented him at first. When he finally regained his senses, he could see that this place was different from the last, even as his surrounding possessions remained the same. The new place was dark, poorly lit, and smelled vaguely of sulfur, which was not nearly as pleasant as the aroma of the incense that had surrounded him only moments ago.

A new voice, differing from that of St. Peter, spoke to him. This voice was whiny, grating, preciously self-centered, cynical, both dull and unusually excited all at once. This voice pronounced:

“I am the Devil. Welcome to your new home.”

“Thank you for all of these nice things you have brought to me, so designated as mine the moment you determined that you would not heed the call of your family, friends and neighbors to enjoy, then share, so that you might cease clinging to worldly possessions."

“But, sir…May I call you sir?” Wally replied, “I can see that they might have been right about the sharing thing. I shall be happy to share all of this with you, Mr. Devil, sir. I am thrilled to see that they were all wrong when they insisted that I could not take it with me. Yet here are all my wonderful things, even though they have been relocated twice in two days!”

“Share?” the Devil bellowed, “You gotta be kidding! There is no sharing in this place! It's all mine. All mine! You have nothing! You took nothing with you! They were right. You cannot. All you did was to deliver what is rightfully mine now, to me. Your stuff is my stuff. You are my slave. You always have been. You were just the last to know it.”

There in that dark and foreboding place, Wally would spend the rest of eternity. But it wasn't the lack of good lighting, the extremely uncomfortable seating (mostly jagged rocks), the terrible stench, or the complete lack of any food except for the occasional entrails or moldy bread on so-called “good days” like Halloween. No, it was not any of this that bothered him. It was that the Devil got to play with all of his toys, drive his fancy car, wear his Rolex, and smoke that never-ending Cohiba cigar that Wally had been saving, all those years, for a special occasion. While that special occasion never came for Wally, he would live out eternity with one small pleasure — that his friends and family had been dead wrong, and he had been dead right. Because he concluded that after all, you CAN take it with you—even if you end up giving it all away to the Devil himself.

You Can't Take It With You

So when he died that day—not suddenly, but as part of a long slow decline in his health and well being, Wally still had most of what he had been told that he could never take with him.

“I am the Devil. Welcome to your new home.”