The Rapture

Not everyone has seen the show "Six feet under". It is on HBO and is about a family that runs a funeral home. This morning Patty told me about an episode we missed. I thought you might enjoy the synopsis. Keep in mind that when the rapture occurs the saved are supposed to float up to heaven.


Episode #41, "In Case of Rapture," commences with the death of Dorothy Sheedy, 40 years young, who is described as "a devoted member of the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles."

Our story begins with two workers who are busy filling up inflatable sex dolls with helium, so that they can be used for a display at an adult film awards show. After clowning around with inhaled helium, the two gents begin to transport the inflatable dolls, secured under a net in the back of their pick-up truck. Preoccupied for a moment with an X-rated adult magazine, they stop short to avoid hitting a skateboarder. The sudden stop, however, loosens the net; unbeknownst to the workers, the dolls start floating upward toward the sky.

Coming from another direction, Sheedy is driving her car, with its "I Brake for the Rapture" bumper sticker. She’s listening to a Christian radio broadcast on marital relations, uttering "Praise the Lord," as she nods her head in agreement with the talk-show host. Suddenly, Sheedy stops her car. She can hardly believe the sight before her eyes. Seeing the dolls floating toward the heavens, she mistakes them for actual angelic human beings, heaven-bound, as part of the foretold Rapture, when Christ removes all the right-believing Christians from the Earth to spare them the onslaught of the End of Days. It’s a little piece of religious eschatology, justified by certain Protestant sects with references to books of the Old and New Testament.

"Oh My Lord, Sweet Jesus," Sheedy exclaims. She cannot contain her joy as a witness to the heavenly vanishing. Moving toward the imagined Rapture, her arms outstretched toward the clouds, she walks into the road, and gets hit—and killed—by an oncoming car.

At the funeral home of the Fishers, her widower husband appears to fully accept his wife’s death as the Will of God. Clearly, her time had come.