I'm not a fan of compensatory afterlife thinking, which would view earthly pain and suffering as a mere 'drop in the bucket' compared to heaven. Even when one's earthly life is dominantly characterized by suffering, billions and billions of years in the afterlife will more than make up for it.
First off, I'm not even sure
(1) Uncountable billions of years in heaven will help you forget about any earthly pain and suffering you had
is false. For all I know (1) is true. But (1) doesn't explain (much less justify) the existence of earthly pain and suffering. In order to justify the pain and suffering, we'd need some details, perhaps along the lines of
(2) Earthly life is a time of soul-making, in which souls are prepared for the afterlife
and
(3) Pain and suffering are necessary for soul-making
and
(4) The afterlife will more than compensate a person for any earthly pain and suffering
and
(5) The value of the quality of a person's earthly life pales in comparison to the value of the quality of a person's afterlife
The conjunction of (2) through (5) could be the start of a compensatory theodicy.
There seems to be a prima facie tension here. The theodicy implies that (and I'm just going to make up some numbers for the purpose of illustration) 0.0000001% years of badness is justified by 99.9999999% years of goodness.
Does the theodicist really want to stand behind this ratio, though? That is, does the theodicist really want to endorse (5)? One might wonder to what extent God endorses (5), if on Resurrection Day God judges how each person will spend 99.9999999% of his or her life based upon how they spent the 0.0000001% of it. In other words, God does not seem to consider the value of the quality of one's earthly life as a mere 'drop in the bucket' at all. God seems to weigh the quality of that 0.0000001% as much as he does the 99.9999999%. In which case, God seems to reject (5).
Does compensatory theodicy undermine itself? Insofar as (2) through (5) are inconsistent, it seems so.
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