In honor of the new year, I’ve been catching up by phone with some of the friendships that have lasted for the long term. One friend has been in my life since we were both students at the now-defunct High School of Music and Art in New York City. Another is the only friend I’ve kept since our Fulbright year in Paris, many worlds ago.

In both long telephone calls, conversations turned to the friends who’d assembled with us on these important plateaus in life. What had happened to each of them, after the plateau? The questions and possible answers meant a lot to me, because of my idea of a Best Outcome after we die.

I take for granted that this life is not the only one we get. If you think differently, but want to follow along with me, then do this: first, suspend your disbelief for the duration of the thought experiment; second, ask yourself what heaven would look like, if you could design one that met your specifications.

For myself, I have no hesitation in giving the coordinates for my personal heaven. It would have to include the following: long, confidential café chats with my women friends on the meaning of life and love; cantering over unplowed Downeast fields with woman friends gone before me; rollicking reunions with colleagues – men who were friends in good times and bad – as we think over what it all taught us, from the start to now, and from here on. There’s a couple I’ve loved, my whole life long, and I would like to see them again. Also, there were wise parental friends whom I just sat and listened to, and I would like to do that again, curled up as before on the scratchy red couch. 

There’s a few more, but in my heaven we all get together, dust ourselves off, and compare notes. Is there more to it? Well, since the reunion would have to be finely calibrated to each returnee – more so than can be described here – obviously I must omit identifying details.

But that’s it. Abbie’s heaven.

It shouldn’t be that hard to arrange. But why, come to think of it, should heaven have to wait till you die? I could convene the party now – at least in thought, I could. So I drew up the list of invitees. If we start with the kids I knew when I was ten, it gets pretty long.

I’ll tell you how it broke down – not the individual names of course, but the broad classifications – as, in my heart’s imagination, I tried to picture each one now.

1. Some were live-wire kids but would likely have become more staid and settled as grownups, leaving most of their spontaneity behind.

2.  As for my high school girl friends, to retain their full personalities, some would have needed more personal force than they likely had. Others might have used up most of the youthful life-force they possessed in securing safe berths for their futures. (In those days, if you didn’t marry right after college, you were herstory. Author’s note: I was herstory.) 

In one striking case, what appeared to be the fulfillment-of-a-young-girl’s dream turned out to have been bought at the price of abject, self-abasing, spiritual surrender to a husband who’d looked like the stranger you tossed coins in Rome’s fontana di trevi to meet. By the time I met them in Rome, she’d been taught to regret her experimental youth and “envy” the Italian girls who brought virginity intact to their nuptials. After they married and had their baby, she brought him to New York. I never found out what happened to the dream romance once he discovered that the streets of New York weren’t paved with gold … 

3. Among the colleagues, some showed honor in a tight spot and paid heavily for it. One, who looked like a young prince, did not overcome a tragic flaw and paid devastatingly for it. And others were never slated for tragedy or else landed on their feet. A life that still pursues wisdom but knows how to have fun too is, for me, a good life!

What did I learn, from this attempt in thought, to round up the guests for a gang’s-all-here reunion? Well, the guest list will have to be shorter than I’d hoped. They can’t all be here. Not at the same time or for the same reunion. In many cases, the life stories of my invitees branched off into side-paths they could not share. Others lingered at roadblocks still unsurmounted. One or two were brought to full stop by cascading regrets.

I wish they could all be there. But more will decline with polite thanks than will prove able to attend.