bellascribe

Posthumously.

From A.M. Homes’ The Mistress’s Daughter:

Salt Lake [City] is “the mountain,” the mecca for genealogical information — home base for the Mormons, who go around the world collecting genealogical data. Every month five to six thousand reels of microfilm are added to their collection. Unbeknownst to much of the general population, the reason the Mormon Church has such wonderful genealogical records is that they’re collecting people — they hope to determine the genealogy of everyone in the world to prepare them for posthumous conversion. Basically they’re making Mormons from the dead — baptism by proxy. They have a purification ritual through which they claim you as their own. There has been outrage from the Jewish community because the Mormons took the information of Holocaust victims — people who were killed because of their religion — and made them Mormons. In 1995 the LDS church said it would honor an agreement to stop the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews, and yet it continues. “And they are making more Mormons every day. I went once for two weeks,” the woman tells me.

Don’t you feel better now knowing what happens to you after you die?

I remember asking my mother that question, what happens when we die, at about almost age 5. This existential crisis happened before I started kindergarten and what concerned me most was the thought that I wouldn’t be able to draw, not likely, not if I didn’t exist. My mother comforted me with a reassuring tale of how all my crayons would be available to me in a heaven where I could color endlessly. (She did not say, “Don’t worry, honey, you will become a Mormon and all will be well.”)

Then kindergarten; and perhaps lulled by the notion I’d have eternity with my beloved crayons, I became a slacker in this department and was quite shocked, and saddened — crushed, really! — when Ronald S., sitting at my table, won the coloring contest. Mrs. V. had circled our table again and again and I took for granted that it was my orange pumpkin she was eyeing approvingly. I remember scrutinizing Ronald’s colored pumpkin to find what comprised the winning edge. In vain.

I have never told anyone this before. This post is now subtitled “Or the Colored Orange Pumpkin Confession.”