Dave called this morning to ask about the service. I responded with incredibility to that since I wasn’t aware of any recent deaths. He said that he felt sorry for my loss. He read the paper and saw that my father died in Phoenix survived by his son whom lives in Indianapolis. He was genuinely concerned for me which was quite touching and the fact that he remembered some of the details of my life was a bonus—of course remembering perfectly would have been nicer.
I told him that I just spoke with my dad yesterday, but he was still insistent on the point. I can’t blame him since he took the time to read, think, emote, and then call me to express condolences—for a guy that takes a great deal of energy and to have it go to waste is actually quite unfair. In fact, if I let the call go to voicemail, he’d probably had gone to the funeral service the next day. Imagine how that would have turned out, although he knows I’d never do that to him. I asked Dave when did my father die and he said Saturday and I said well, I talked with him Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so it must be a coincidence and with that ended one of the stranger wake up calls I’ve ever received.
I almost felt like saying to Dave, “I guess I have been talking to the ghost of my father for a while now,” but then that might be cutting close to home. How many times have we talked vacuously about things and life, avoiding the real issues that we should be discussing? How often do we really talk to our real fathers? In many ways for me, talking with my dad has been talking with a ghost since I am reluctant to give him many real words and his responses have been often quite terse and scary. Sometimes it gets to the point where he’ll exclaim that I don’t even like him.
In a sense he must feel that he has been talking to the ghost of me for most of our lives. Yet how much of our conversations are in fact with real people covering real deep issues and feelings? Don’t we spend most of our time talking to the ghosts of others never really knowing their real selves?
I think of the Waste Land.
I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Are we each just trapped in separate prisons never able to break out into the minds and lives of others? However did not my Marley deliver a clarion call from beyond the grave? Maybe I have been talking too long to the ghost inside myself.
Well even if these ghosts of others and me are just fragments of reality, I can still take these fragments and make a life out of them, shoring them up against any of the ruins that I have created in my time. Both our obituaries are far from being written.
