If a body that suffers is done with sin, as St. Peter said, then I saw perfection's bones barely holding skin, melting in the bed,
The biggest man I knew was barely days away from dead, and he said, "Heaven is home."

The third step-son of a seventh son, my mother's only dad now lay down, stricken, one desperate lung and Marlboro mad,
Still, that man breathed in enough to be amazed at all he had, and he sang, "Heaven is home."

His last breath he took,
He read from the book; it said everybody dies,
Now he's two years gone, and I still can look at tears in my mother's eyes,
She says, "Son, what matters most is the way you wave goodbye, and if Heaven is..."