I have nothing to attribute the stories to (in which to
attribute? Nope. Too formal.) that I am about to share. No hidden agenda, no expectation
that the experiences have any significance past the witness I bear. For me,
they are not solid evidence of some particular doctrine. I can’t tell you why,
and frankly, in my mind- if it’s all the same to you- you can’t tell me why,
either. Because, in all fairness, my guess would be every bit as good as yours,
and vice versa. You may feel free to call your convictions “beliefs” or “faith”
and I will understand. But for me, I find comfort in the notion that these
occurrences happen, in whatever relative consciousness or perception I assume I
possess, simply because they just “do.”
And maybe my mind has the ability to weave these meanings
together from the threads of memory, from leftover pieces of information,
affection, energy- all earmarked in the person’s name. To create significance
out of what others choose to call coincidence. Who knows? (Your guess or mine?)
So, enough preface. I will get to it: Whenever someone dies
that I am close to, I feel like the conversation with them continues. Like a
vague, nagging thought about them turns into a phrase, or an observation of
exactly what they want me to know. In particular, this seems to apply to close
relatives, although it has happened with friends who have died unexpectedly, or
parents of close friends.
The night my Grandpa died (although I was unaware that he
had died), I was sitting next to John in a giant arena after the theatre performance
that had brought us together. We were holding hands, high with the excitement
of new love. This was not something I could have verbalized at the time, (more
of a looking back and understanding what it is that I understood) but at one
point, I sensed my grandpa there with us, even said (somewhere in my mind to
somewhere in his mind) “Here he is, Grandpa. This is the one.” Like I somehow
introduced them. Got his approval. My mom waited until the next day to give me
the news because she didn’t want to ruin all our hard work by making me sad.
That was when it made sense. When I “knew” he really had been there, after all.
Visiting us in California, like he never
had been able to when he was alive.
Things were slightly different when my Grandma died, because
a good deal of our energy was focused on helping my Papa through the agony of
losing his lifelong companion. I learned a lot about the social and communal
aspects of death. How to help. What to say. What to do. How to lose someone,
but also how to console the living.
After the funeral, I accompanied my aunt to the grocery
store to get more supplies for the house full of guests and mourners. As we
loaded items onto the belt, the ring my Grandma had given me on my 13th
birthday- that had been her mother’s, that I had worn ever since- got caught (I’m
not even sure on what) and snapped at the base. I burst into tears, relieved
that the pinch of the metal gave me an excuse. My heart was broken that such a
special heirloom had to choose THIS particular moment to break. My aunt just
looked at me and smiled. “ You know, that’s actually very special. They say
that when someone dies, if something that they gave you breaks, it means that
they are here with you.”
My Nana died during a bitter frozen winter in Upstate New
York. She had been single and alone in her apartment for 26 years. The whole
family was there for her funeral, but from the minute I crossed the threshold
into her apartment, I knew in no uncertain terms exactly what she wanted. We
had only one week to orchestrate the disassembly of her belongings- into boxes,
to friends, to donation, to the post office- and that was exactly what we were
to do.In frozen 2 degree weather, we huddled together at her
graveside stunned silent by the new education of how cold could permeate layers of
jacket like they weren’t even there. As the Rabbi began speaking, a chilling
wind whipped up, and I felt my Nana pass through us. Lamenting things undone, unsaid.
She couldn’t rest with dignity until her affairs were all settled.
As we combed through dishes, drawers, personal belongings,
my brother found an old bag of cassette tapes. And (coincidentally??) he also
found an old tape player. In my haste to complete the daunting task, I probably
would have thrown them away. But as we took clothes off of hangers, pictures
off of walls, my brother pushed play. And we listened to my Nana’s voice, young
and clear, audio journaling her solo drive across the country-from New York to
Riverside- to visit our family. She described each day’s drive, the people she
met along the way, the landmarks she had always wanted to see. And the
excitement (and exhaustion) grew as she neared her destination. Her voice a
notch higher in Arizona, then filled with anticipation as she crossed the
threshold into California. And as an unfathomable finale, she shouted into the
tape recorder with excitement as she spotted our house. The car door opened,
and the screams of our childhood selves shattered the room. Celebrating her
arrival. “You’re HERE!! YOU’RE HERE!!!” She was there and we were here and it
was then and now all at once.
My Papa couldn’t understand what was taking him so long to
die. Once Grandma was gone, he engraved his own headstone next to hers and
visited it regularly. The only nagging detail keeping them apart was the blank
spot after the dash that would one day separate his birth from his death. It
took ten years of Papa impatiently waiting to be with Grandma again. When he
died, I felt sad for the obvious reasons, but also because it was the first
time I just didn’t feel a thing. No energy at all. No trace. Gone. We packed up
his belongings- he wasn’t there. Went to the temple services- still nothing.
Like he finally got his dying wish, and never looked back.
But then we got to the graveside. In a Jewish funeral, they
lower the coffin into the ground, and every person takes a turn returning the
loved one to the earth- scooping a shovel of dirt into the grave, but holding the
shovel upside down as a symbol of regret for the action. My Papa had thrown
himself, wailing, onto my Grandma’s coffin when it was her turn to be lowered,
and I expected to feel similarly solemn about the experience the second time
around. To my surprise, it was quite the opposite. As soon his coffin hit its
long awaited resting spot, I felt a burst of happiness that spun high into the
air. My grandparents together again, twirling in a spirited dance of joy! I had
to suppress a giggle, and assumed it was the inappropriate reaction that
nervousness sometimes brings. But my brother Geoff caught my eye, and he asked
me (out loud, in actual verbal language) if I had felt that. We laughed
together, in knowing celebration.
It took me my entire
life- and especially the three years of illness leading up to the end of my dad’s
life- to become strong enough to handle losing him. The night my father died, I was
sitting at his side, holding his hand. Our
whole family surrounded him, and our breathing was his breathing. We were one
in the way that ancient texts describe everyone being connected. And my dad was
carried along through our current of love. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, and I
don’t know if it really happened or if I imagined it, but I felt him travel through
me on his way out. And it was every emotion you could imagine, all at once. Of
course sadness, and a touch of fear, but also support and encouragement, and
exhilaration, and a surprising component of outright joyousness. Of freedom and
light and movement and color and sound and transformation. From where to where?
I don’t know.
In his final breath, his final descent, I felt the cool
tingle of his energy as it left through my fingers. And we all knew he was
gone.
Gone isn’t the right word, though. Not here? Not him? Not in
his body?
It took a little time to settle into whatever form of
consciousness (for lack of a better term) he took on, or perhaps returned to,
in death. Like those crazy Magic Eye
posters we all used to stare at- not sure what we were trying to look for, how
it would appear- I had to blur my realistic focus and recognize that what I was
seeing had to be perceived in a different way than I was used to.
The colors, same as the ones I had seen when he died, were
the easiest for me to comprehend. I know what I have seen before, and I know
what I haven’t. These colors seemed to be more than one thing at a time, and
never stopped changing. They were not the static forms of energy we are
accustom to calling a table, or a vase of flowers. Closer to the notion of a
sunset.
I “heard” him telling me things. Insistent things.
Omniscient things. Not in words, exactly. More like I had thought the words,
but they weren’t mine. Like there is a big story and a lot of answers and he
wanted to share them with me, but we suddenly had a language gap. Or perhaps
there isn’t language to explain what we have tried, in every configuration, to
manifest.
The most surprising sensation I experienced was physical,
and lasted for days, if not weeks, after his death. My upper body felt the
queasy, non-specific uneasiness you feel when your finger accidentally gets in-between
the plug and the socket and you get zapped. I attributed it to the unfamiliar level
of grief, or to being tense, (or perhaps the absence of being tense) until one
day, the sensation was so pervasive that I actually mentioned it out loud to
someone. “It is odd. I don’t feel it in my head or neck, or lower arms, just
right around my upper arms and back. Almost like I could draw a line around me…
almost like a………hug.”
There are too many stories to fit them all here. Songs,
influences, reparations, phrases that I hear until I have to say, “OK, OK,
already!” and repeat the message out loud, so he knows I heard. And over time,
the sharpness, the rawness of our connection has mellowed. Sort of like a song
you have heard so many times, you feel like you almost can’t hear it anymore.
I can tell you that from my experience, what is “here” and
what is “there” has become a whole lot more interesting. I try to listen the
best I can. I want to get the whole story. But, similar to the bits that are
lost in translation when a book written in one language is told in another,
there are pieces missing. Subtle nuances that change the entire meaning. Ones
that can’t quite be replaced.
It has been nearly two years since my dad died, and on what
would have been his 69th birthday, I find myself thinking about him.
Reminiscing. It still feels like an odd dream, like I haven’t talked to him in
a while and owe him a phone call. Like he’s perfectly content sitting in a
comfortable chair overlooking the view, pouring over his medical and law
journals, or blissed-out , following his fingers on the piano. He’s busy somewhere
living his life and we are busy living ours. Which is largely true, for the
most part. Only his forwarding address is to parts unknown. At least for now, I
suppose.
How strange it is, typing into the night and then sending my
thoughts into the stratosphere. It’s a one-way ticket. I never know where they
land. I wonder if you’re skeptical. Searching for tangible explanations, excuses.
Or you might have a perfectly good answer for why these things happen. Or maybe
you really couldn’t care less either way. But if you have read this far, then
perhaps you ponder the bigger meaning, the deeper connection. If so, then maybe
sharing my experience will at least give you some form of peace, fill in a few
pieces of the puzzle you are trying to solve. (Or you may just get a good
chuckle at the latest confirmation that I am a whack job!!) At the very least,
I hope you will find some comfort in the thought that there is comfort to be
found. Why? How? I will leave those questions and their answers up to you.