Once I moved back up to Michigan from South Georgia the summer of 1999, I’d go to my dad’s house and we’d visit. We’d chat back and forth, often debating issues of the day. My stepmother said she hated listening to us because it sounded like arguing.
I’m not sure she noticed the gleam in his eye during these discussions. He’d gone to college intending to become a lawyer, but after one year was drafted because of the Korean War. He served in the states, repairing the electronics in planes, along with radios and televisions, which is how he ended up selling and repairing them once he was discharged, returning to Michigan with three small children born during those four years on base. He’d had polio during that time, as well.
Surprisingly, it took some persuasion to get him interested in computers. By that time, he’d been in the food industry for several decades and wasn’t as interested in electronics. Computers wouldn’t last long, he said.
Finally, he invested in one and started writing his own programs, eventually repairing them for his friends and family. Much of our discussions then centered on DOS, disks, and drives, new programs, installing RAM and other hardware, and software.
When he’d been down visiting me in Georgia in the mid-90s, he had a heart attack. Later, he discovered he had diabetes. Having been a pipe smoker all his life, the combination of the heart attack, polio, diabetes, and smoking all took a toll in his last decade on his appearance, his health, and his ability to walk without an aid.
I lived in a neighboring community through spring 2003, where I was working and attending a community college. Despite long days of full-time retail, then accounting and secretarial work and full-time school, getting my AA and BA, I’d visit frequently.
Then in July 2003, I moved closer to the university since I’d be going to school full time on scholarship and teaching four college classes each semester. In 2006, I received my MFA.
Between semester breaks, I’d go visit. He listened while I talked about going back and getting my Ph.D. Everyone at that point thought I was wasting my time at 58, but since my employer was paying the tuition and I’d always wished it, why not?
Even though he didn’t say the words, I could tell he was proud of me for doing it, but he had this strange look on his face. His thinking-about-the-past look, I called it.
One of my last chats with Dad occurred just after I’d started taking my first class for that last degree. He was becoming frailer. We both knew what was happening and talked about death frequently.
He laughed when I told him he’d be contacting me. I could tell he didn’t fully believe me. Oh, he’d heard my various stories and events regarding other spirits, but he’d never comment or ridicule me like other family would. And, he’d get the thinking-about-the-past face. I always wondered if he was recalling family now gone ever having contacted him in the past but was something he never talked about it.
That particular day, we talked about many things. At one point, he looked at me and said, “You never did go down the normal path, did ya’?”
“You’re just figuring that out?” I asked. He had a twinkle in his eye. While he wasn’t saying it, I knew he was proud of the path I had taken, was taking–even though he had never really agreed with it much of it at the time. When I was younger, he’d always suggest safer, more practical routes for me to take. I told him I knew what I was doing and why.
That’s when he started talking about a few of his regrets. How he let fear stop him. My stepdad said the same thing shortly before he died—how he wished he’d lived his own life instead of everyone else’s expectations.
I understood then what some of those thinking-about-the-past expressions had been about. He’d been thinking of the roads not traveled, the paths not taken.
No doubt Dad’s limitations were because of us kids. But my stepdad had no children; his limitations had to have been his parents. For much of his life, he lived with them and continued to live in that house until he needed daily assistance.
Even though Dad wasn’t alive when I received my Ph.D., I knew he was watching. I could tell when he’d visit, usually late at night as we were both night owls, because he’d mess with my VCR or my TV turning them off or on, doing the opposite of what I was trying to do. He was playing with me. I could smell his pipe tobacco or his morning toast when he was around, too.
About a year after he died, a medium told me that Dad was one of my guardians and that he was saying how I had shown them all on how to get it done—the education, the writing, to finding paths that would fulfill my passions. That they were all learning from my experience.
I can tell he’s in a happy place with deceased family he’d been talking to in his last days. The relatives are reunited, having a grand ole time together, like they did when I was young.
He hasn’t been around as much these past couple years, but when I smell that toast or tobacco, I get goosebumps knowing he’s here, watching, checking in.
We’re still chatting.
Into the Core: One Woman's Mystic Journey 