[ WP ] You die and go to heaven only to be told you have `` unfinished business '' and are sent back to the moment 10 minutes before your fatal heart attack to finish it . You have no idea what this `` business '' is .

I've got ten minutes. Or less. 
 
 Saint Peter was pretty strident with me, though I could never find the phrase `` unfinished business'' in anything I had ever read about Heaven. My arrival at the Pearly Gates was unheralded, as it presumably is for billions of souls the world over who take the trip when death does what it does to everyone. 
 
 But I was headed back to Earth, and I could n't imagine why. Still, it would have been nice to stay. 
 
 Heaven looks like a great place. Streets of gold, someone mentioning something about a'new body' and never feeling pain, and I could even see my parents waving at me from behind a gate. But I could n't go in. 
 
 Here I am, racking my brain, trying to figure out what Saint Peter could possibly have meant. I know what's going to happen to me in a few minutes, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I'm going to have to go through that pain again, that boa-constrictor feeling in my chest, it was the most awful thing I had ever experienced. 
 
 I live ( or lived, if you will ) alone. No one saw me fall, no one heard as I cried for help and tried to reach my phone to call 911. I know now that even if I make the call this time, it wo n't matter. It's not Groundhog Day, and I'm not Bill Murray. I wo n't wake up tomorrow and I wo n't get to do this again. 
 
 I'm not William Henley in `` Invictus'': I am not the master of my fate, and I am not the captain of my soul. 
 
 The clock is ticking. The tightness in my chest begins again, squeezing, pain shooting up and down my arm. It's happening again. 
 
 I sag to my knees. It seems worse than last time and before the blackness enfolds me for a second time, I cry out. 
 
 `` God, help me.'' 
 
 I awaken, or so it seems, to a shimmering white light. I'm in my old place in line outside the gates, and Saint Peter wears the same expression he did only a few minutes before. 
 
 But this time, he makes a mark in a large book. 
 
 `` The Book of Life,'' he says, with a smile. `` You were in it, but you had unfinished business, which you have successfully transacted. Enter Heaven, my friend, and be at peace.'' 

