Bringing Them Back

Me and Mom in a Photo Booth, circa 1965

November is "National Novel Writing Month," and I've taken it upon myself to give it a try.  So far I'm desperately behind where I need to be to actually be finished by the 30th, but I've got something.  I'm never comfortable writing about my writing while it's happening, but I will say this:  It's both wonderful and sad to be bringing back people who have been gone from my life for many years.  The process of writing forces me to have to recall details and moments, to make the characters "come to life."

In this particular story, I am bringing to life a character based on my mother, another on my father, and an older couple based on my grandparents.  All of these individuals died years ago, and as I flesh out these characters, it brings a host of emotions.  In one way I'm delighted to see them all, and then there's that sadness, that reminder that they're gone.  If you've ever had a dream in which your departed loved one appears, then you know the regret that comes the moment you wake up.  

By spending time on this novel, I'm prolonging that dream a bit.  It's difficult to go on, however, knowing it will have to end.  But then, one could easily say the same thing about life.  And yet we go on, and do the best we can, in the hopes we leave some kind of legacy for those who come after us.  

So, for this reason I will continue to work on the novel, continue to bring them all back to life, in the hopes I'll create something that I can leave behind -- something that will live on, long after I am gone.

Love, Death and Bedtime: Just Another Goodnight Kiss

Our five year old looked at me last night at bedtime and said, almost lovingly, “You’re going to be dead soon, Daddy.”

If you allow yourself to hear this sort of remark at face value, you tend to go right to Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense and the “I-See-Dead-People” scene. You imagine that fucked up little dead girl, dribbling the rat poison out of the side of her mouth, standing just over his shoulder, nodding in agreement. But it usually takes only one or two questions with Jackson, before you realize he’s coming from another place altogether.

Usually that place is somewhere out in left field or beyond, but this time, when he explains himself, it kind of makes sense. He’s lying in bed as I tuck him in, asking, “Now why would you say something like that, Jackson? Daddy’s not planning on dying any time soon.”

He reaches up and gently strokes my goatee. “Your beard looks gray. You’re getting old. You’re gonna die soon.”

I explain to him that even though I am aging, I am far from being aged, and I repeat that I plan on being around for a long, long time. He appears skeptical of this point, and a cute little worry line forms between his two perfect eyebrows.

I add the obligatory Lion King Mufasa speech, one I’ve delivered to both sons before, about how when we die we live on in the hearts of our loved ones, and therefore we mustn’t worry about dying. We must concern ourselves instead with how to live our lives in the best way we possibly can.

I’m writing this in a slightly cynical tone, but I really do believe these words quite deeply. I realized it when I said my final farewells to my father, eleven years ago this coming Monday, on April 18, 2000. Even as I was wailing out my sadness and grief in front of family and friends on that beautiful Easter morning of his funeral, I could sense my father there with me, as he always had been throughout my life up to that moment, his gentle, guiding hand on my shoulder. Whenever I need to, I can still feel his comforting embrace.

I want to hold my own boys closely enough so that they can draw upon the memory of that embrace, even after I’m gone.