Lenten Diary 4

A Crack in the Tomb

     March is almost half over, and here in Norfolk we’re seeing warmer days—actually occasional T-shirt weather—between spells of wind, rain, and cold. Tonight, March 13, it’s cold, but it felt a lot colder for most of the day as a fierce northwest wind swept across the Chesapeake Bay, freezing our faces.

     Yet away from the wind, in a brilliant clear sky, the March Sun was like a heated blanket. Coming closer and closer every day, the smell of victory is on the wind. And tomorrow will be warmer.

     Coincidentally, as I was driving to the city swimming pool—having bagged the idea of an afternoon walk in that wind—I had a peculiar and somewhat disorienting experience.

     For a moment I felt like my father was driving my car, as if “I” (whoever that is) had moved to the background of my perceptions and he had emerged in the foreground, taking charge of a good part of my body. I even saw his hands on the steering wheel, as if they were mine.

     And I remembered something. He always liked to drive.

     And something else. At times since he died in 2000, when I’ve driven home at night when I shouldn’t have, I’d have this eerie feeling of someone driving the car for me. I called him “the guy who always gets me home.” It was a sensation, like an alert force inside my skin, keeping me safe against all odds. I appreciated it, but I didn’t know what it meant.

     Today, on the way to Northside Pool for a therapeutic swim, that guy revealed himself to me. He’s my father! He’s still alive! He’s still my parent, my brother—my good relation!

     Such epiphanies come and go, and when they go you’re not sure what to believe. But I have a theory. It goes back to psychics I’ve listened to and read over the years who report that spirits frequently enter human consciousness. They may be “earth-bound” souls seeking  pleasures they’re still addicted to. Bars are said to be common hangouts for them. But sometimes they’re loved ones who want to make someone on this side aware of something.

     In my last post I expressed my doubt that my father really exists any more, now that he’s been gone for over thirteen years. Not that I found any peace in that thought. But I had the Lenten blues. My hope had worn thin over these past few difficult years.

     But today brought me a surge of reassurance. I can’t explain it, but for a moment this afternoon I experienced the clear sensation of my father alive within my body, driving my car. From the vast, unknowable dimensions of the subconscious, he focused his identity as my father into my consciousness, not just as a memory but as himself, alive in the present moment.

     This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been open to it, and I might not have been if I hadn’t been driving. He taught me to drive, even helped me buy my first car. He was a good driver. I’d trust him to drive my car any day. I don’t believe he ever had an accident, which is more than I can say for myself.

     It would be like my father—to have a kindly regard for me in my moments of doubt. It would be like him to try to respond to my unanswered questions, like whether impermanence is really all there is. Hearing from him would give me great hope. I would feel a sense of rebirth in myself to have that hope, a rush of upward energy, like a shoot in the warming March Sun.

     Like a crack in mortality’s granite tomb.

Lenten Diary 3

The Sobriety of Lenten Reflection

     As we entered this second week of Lent, I came close to being one sorry fool of Fate.

     My laptop died. At least it showed every sign of it—a dark screen at start-up, and then nothing. It came at a bad time. I had a press release I wanted to send out before evening.

     Well, forget the press release. Forget my laptop. It was acting just like my last laptop when it died after I clicked on a website I shouldn’t have.

     I’d been messaged by friends that morning that my Twitter account had been hacked, I needed to change my password. I followed the advice but noticed that my internet was running slow.

     I didn’t connect those two facts until later, when my screen stayed dark at start-up. Did getting hacked on Twitter have something to do with crashing my laptop? But it didn’t matter anyway. My computer was dead. The internet was slow. Strange coincidence but I doubted they were connected.

     I gave up my business plan and went out for the evening to an open mic.

     When I got back around midnight I tried to access my email account with my wife’s iPad. But the internet was still painfully slow. So I blamed it on Verizon and shut down the iPad and the wireless router. Maybe the internet would be back up in the morning. I’d have to call a geek about my laptop. Until then, try to forget about it.

     But I couldn’t forget about it. I decided to give my computer one last chance to start. With the router off, I hit the power button. The dark screen came up. I waited. Nothing. I showed my wife. We commiserated. My attention went elsewhere. When I turned back, the familiar Windows wallpaper shone brightly from the screen with my short-cut icons neatly stacked around its edges. Was this for real? How did it happen?

     I turned on the router and queued my press release to send. Whish! Out it went. The internet was back! All is well! No explanations given, no technical fixes applied. Now it works, now it doesn’t, then it does.

     But one day it won’t. And nothing will fix it. That’s the hazard of life. Most of the time we may falter and fail but we don’t die. You can get to thinking there is no death, at least not for this or that person, place, or thing, because of all the times they didn’t die.

     Then, one day, it happens. They really die. It only takes once, and that once is appointed on every calendar. One day my laptop, like all my former computers, will die. One day, inconceivable as it may seem to me, I, too, will die. Some day. But not yet. Not today.

     That’s Lenten sobriety for you, and it leads to all sorts of premises about how we don’t really die, we just...pass on, cross over, change form, resurrect. After-death mythology is not only various but highly enticing, especially at this time of year. Lent, after all, begins with the reminder: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the primal curse of God on man and woman. We are all mortal! Repent, repent!

     But there is a spring which follows winter, and from that lovely inevitability we speculate—or insist—that there must be life after death. I, for instance, was raised to believe in reincarnation. My family spent many hours around the kitchen table speculating on our past-life relationships. My parents were brother and sister in a former life. My father and I were once brothers. In this life my mother is my father’s teacher. Or so a psychic told her. I always  wondered if my father agreed.

     I don’t disbelieve any of that, but I don’t believe it as I once did, without much question. Both my parents have “passed on.” And since the dates of their passing, most recently my father in 2000, I find my feeling of closeness to their departed souls fading. My father, my mother—they’re becoming memories more than living presences in my mind. I don’t know if they still exist somewhere as my parents. I rather doubt it. I’m not really sure they still exist, except as fading memories.

     So it is with all attachments. Five years ago my bicycle was stolen. I bought it in 1988. I identified with it. It was an extension of myself, part of who I was. I greatly mourned its loss. But I need a bike, so I bought a new one, a Jamis, same make as my old one but not the same bike. It took me about three years to accept the new bike as my bike rather than a substitute for my bike. I had many good years with that bike. You could say we were a couple.

     Now I don’t think about my old bike that much. It has become a memory. Now my new bike is my bike. It could outlast me, in which case it will most likely become someone else’s bike. Just as my old bike did. And I will not have a bike. I can’t quite imagine myself not having a bike. I can’t quite imagine myself dead.

     I see that dissolving attachments and acceptance of mortality is part of the process of Lenten reflection, at least in these early stages. To a Buddhist it’s called Impermanence. Frankly, it haunts me. I don’t want to believe it. I want my parents to still be my parents when I die.