Setting our sights on heaven, there are other realities the Church tells us about await us "at the end of all things:" 

1. Death
2. Judgment
3. Heaven
4. Hell

None of us get out of here alive.  Death was brought to the human family upon the disobedience of our first parents.  St. Paul tells Jewish Christians in his letter to the Hebrews that it is appointed to us once to die and then the judgment in which, as Jesus says, we will give an acocunt of every senesless word that came out of our mouths and the deeds done in the body. 

Many in this life will have failed to hope and trust in the mercy of God revelaed in Jesus Christ and the unfortunate result will be eternal separation from God's love in hell.  Others however, who had put their hope in Christ will eventually make it to heaven, but as St. John tells us in the Revelation, nothing unclean with attachments to sin in this life will enter heaven either.

For many of us, those useless words, senseless actions and selfish attachments will be purged away in a place of purification St. Paul identified as Purgatory in his letter to the Coritnthians.  Like gold refined and purified, spotless and pure, we will finally arrive in heaven through the merits of Jesus Christ and the gift of purgatory.