A Morning Walk - To The Other Side

A glorious morning seemed at hand as I stepped out for a walk. A few thin cloud patches floated above but they did little to hide the brilliant blue of the sky. The sights and sounds of summer abounded. A hummingbird hovered near me. A small airplane droned lazily overhead. A mower engine sputtered in the distance, scenting the air with the aroma of newly-mowed lawn.      

I wanted badly to adopt the mood of the morning as my own but I just couldn’t. My nerves were completely raw from the stresses of the day before when a doctor’s visit turned into a scolding about my cholesterol, blood-pressure and triglyceride levels: all way too high for my 66-year-old system. Later in the day, a backyard cookout devolved into a vicious verbal brawl between my sister and I, helping my metabolic numbers not at all.    

Walking with a purpose, hoping the positive endorphins would soon kick in, a vision stopped me in my tracks. A not unfamiliar figure was beside me. 

“Dad?” I said.

“How ya doing? Mind if I walk with you?”

“S-sure, of course.”

I was standing still frozen in shock ­­­­ — my lips quivered but I could form no words.

Dad motioned me to keep moving. “C’mon, don’t stop.”

All that prevented me from being completely stupefied was that this incident was not without precedent. Dad had actually appeared to me from the beyond twice previously in recent months. Both times were in the quiet and dark of the wee hours in my man cave. Then, he was little more than a colorless visage, staying only long enough to make some obscure remarks about how he liked my second wife better than my first. One of the times he said he liked the way we had decorated our new duplex, and that he was glad we moved to Austin because Illinois politicians were more crooked than Texas, and the weather was better here.

This time, however, he was not simply the amorphous floating mass of before – there one moment and gone the next. Here was my father of an earlier era – not young – but not old either. With hair still on his head, he appeared as I remembered him before his 50^th year when severe Alopecia claimed every single, solitary strand on his body. And he walked with not unsubstantial vigor. It was a far cry from his debilitating last several years when a leg infection impeded his gait and pained his every step, eventually crippling and killing him.

Dad kept pace with me as we stepped onto the trail but we said nothing to one another at first. Still dumbfounded, it was several minutes before I spoke, and even then, could produce only a single ridiculous question. “Y-you’re walking great. Your leg doesn’t hurt?”

“Nope, feels fine,” he replied.

“W-well what brings you around? How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I just sort of woke up and here I am.”

“But I don’t get it,” I said. “The last two times you were just like a mist. Now, it’s like your old self is here. You’re actually walking and talking with me. How is it happening?"

“I don’t know how it happened but there is a reason. I need to talk to you about something.”

His tone and stern look immediately told me that the million or so questions a guy wants to ask when visited by his father’s ghost would have to wait. I felt knocked back into my childhood, about to be on the receiving end of a lecture.

“Oh? Like what?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. I could feel the beginnings of perspiration through my shirt and on my brow. The pebbles of the trail crackled rhythmically underfoot as we went. The only noise and sweat, however,[jm1] seemed to be coming from me —none from my walking partner.

 Then he spoke. “I saw what went on with you and your sister last night and I didn’t like it. I’m tired of you guys always at each other’s throats. When the hell are you two gonna patch things up and quit fighting all the time?”

“You saw it?! What do you mean you saw it? How could you? You’re supposed to be……..”

“I’m telling you I was there. I watched it.”

 Dad – living or dead – proceeded to describe in detail, the whole rancorous affair, just the way it happened: every profanity-laced tirade, every litany of accusations, all the name-calling, the ultimatums, the threats. He had also borne witness as I stormed out of the house, walked briskly to my car, roiling the entire neighborhood with my spinning, squealing tires as I sped away.

In a morning full of bewilderment, the fullness of dad’s depiction of the firefight between his children had astonished me yet again. But though I could scarcely believe how any of this was happening to begin with, it was too late to wallow in my disbelief. 

“Look, she started it,” I shot back, my anguish about the toxic relationship with my sister and I now on full display. “She always starts it. She just can’t seem to help making snide comments about how I’m a spoiled brat and you always favored me over her.”

Dad glared at me. “Well that’s just not true and you damn well know it. Yet, you end up yelling and name-calling just as bad as she does. I wanna see you guys knock it off once and for all, you got me?”

Indeed, I was my father’s son. His hair-trigger temper was mine as well as his. But, like me, Dad had the capacity to calm down almost as quickly as he flared up. So I started carefully. “Listen, I’ll try harder to cool it — no matter how nasty she gets with me — I promise. OK? I just hope you’re going to have this same conversation with her sometime.”

His voice was now softer and more even. “I will.”

I felt the better side of our relationship coming into play once again. I wanted more conversation while he was still with me — yet not with me. “Have you seen Mom at all,” I asked?

“Not since she came over,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘came over?’”

He shot me a glance. “Came over to this side, ya follow?”

I nodded as he continued. 

“I know I wasn’t the best husband that ever lived but I thought maybe she’d show up once in a while — at least to talk to me about what’s going on with you and your sister.”

 “But she was crazy with grief when you died,” I replied in puzzlement. “You should have seen it. She didn’t get over you for a long, long time and it’s been twenty years since she passed. If all this is real, it’s hard to believe you two haven’t seen each other. Maybe she’s got a boyfriend.”

He threw his head back and began laughing so hard we had to stop walking for a minute.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said through the guffaws. “I hope it’s someone younger and better-looking than me with more hair on his head.”

Soon, I joined in the sniggering which soon grew into a spirited sequence of hooting, snorting and backslapping between us. Not since the day he broke 90 at Big Bend Creek and birdied the last three holes had I seen Dad so giddy. When a car passed by it dawned on me: the driver must have gotten a good look at the spectacle of a grown man standing alone on a street corner buckled in convulsive laughter.

Our composure had returned and we were walking again, the pebbles crackling beneath my feet. The subdivision entrance was up ahead. The walk would soon be over.

 The heat was almost searing by now. I looked forward to air-conditioned refuge.

“Can you stick around for a while? Come in out of the heat?” I asked.

“No. I’m not hot. Gotta go as soon as we finish.”

“Coming around again sometime?”

“I don’t know. Can’t say when.” 

We reached the front door. I smiled at him. I considered for a moment how rich a conversation we could have. There we’d be: man to man, adult to adult. It would be in the present day when I knew so much more, not the before when he was alive and I knew so little. How badly I wanted that conversation. I all but implored him. “Why can’t you stay for a while, Dad? There’s so much we could talk about. A lot of things happened to me since you left. Some of it bad, some of it good. But just to talk for a while, I………….”

He waved a hand toward me and interrupted. “Look, from time to time I get to see what you’re up to and you’re doing OK – in fact you’re doing fine. Just live on, keep going and enjoy what you’ve got while you’ve got it. But I just can’t stay. Don’t ask me why.”

“I’ve got cold beer in the fridge,” I said trying a last-ditch temptation.  

“Beer!? – before lunch?” he bellowed. “You’ve got to go easy on that stuff, pal. I saw your doctor’s appointment yesterday too!”

                                   *****

 [jm1]