The last person you would think of

Tony is gone now. He passed away a few years after he told me this story.

Tony was a character. He always dressed as though he had just been doing something like digging the garden, or excavating the backyard. He was never tidy.
But Tony watched out for the rest of us on that street. He sat on the tailgate of his pickup and watched the neighbourhood like some guard dog. If there was a problem he was on it. Crusty, complaining, cantankerous he was always noticing something he didn't like.
He had retired from his job at the Public Works when he was about 65 and by the time he told me this story I think he was getting close to 78.  After the death of his first wife he remarried a simpler woman much younger than himself. He gave her a home and she looked after him right up until just before he passed on. That was a difficult time.
Anyway, one day as I was hauling the groceries out of the car I nodded to him and said,
"In my next life, I am going to be a man"
"You don't believe that do you?" asked Tony, somewhat derisively.
"Maybe. Don't you?"
"I've been to heaven" he said.
"Oh?"
"Yes. When I had my first heart attack the doctors brought me back and that made me so angry"
"What did it look like," I asked.
"Heaven was beautiful," he said, "there was a golden beach, and a golden sky, even the water was golden.  There were golden angels too - with golden wings. So don't tell me about other lives... heaven is real. I have been there."
I didn't know what else to ask. So I thanked him for telling me and struggled inside my home. I have never forgotten this tale. What made it so odd for me was the juxtaposition of opposites, Tony, dirty, mostly unshaven, looking like a homeless guy, and this vision of a golden heaven, pure and unsullied, glinting in the golden light. 
You just never know what brilliant dreams someone has on the inside.