The last thing that I ever expected after dying was waking up, because everything I'd ever been taught, everything I ever believed, told me that death was final.
I was wrong.
Mid August,
I should not be here; I'm supposed to be dead. I know this as sure as the sun shines above… and yet, memories remain…
The year is 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. would stand and deliver his famous; “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the
On the home front or at least as close to home as I was concerned, DK had gotten pregnant for the second time. Her first experience at motherhood had been a year earlier, and had ended unpleasantly in a miscarriage only a few months in, (Oh how she'd wanted the baby, but as luck, or the universe would have it, such was not to be, at least the first time around. This second time however, with a little luck and whole lot of prayer, maybe things would turn out differently.) And though she'd bounced back, as it were, with but minor scaring to her heart and soul, this second experience would end testing her in ways her youthful years of twenty three could never prepare her for. Like '63 itself, the year, and her pregnancy, would end on a bad note.
By mid November, President John F. Kennedy would be dead, his legacy and life faltering, before finally failing, on an operating table in
Despite the suddenness of the flashback, I remain, my eyes drinking in this place, this time, and still… no planes to cut the sky, no clouds to offer shade, only the hammering sun, and crushing heat. The highway around me, for as far as the eye can see, stretches lifeless and void… no motion, no sounds… no life. To either side the same, no cattle to roam the fields, no 'cow trees' for them to stand under, no farmers tractors to toil, no plowed fields to grow, only waves and waves of waist high grass. My only memory, besides my 'other lived life' is being here, standing in the midst of what could have been either Kansas or Nebraska, in the middle of a two lane highway, with no other signs of life around me, no barbed wire fences to hold me in, no farm houses for shelter, no nothing, other than me… and once again, I'm supposed to be dead.
Riding a wave of sudden nausea, I stumble, bring a hand up to my forehead and close my eyes.
I needed to get a grip. I needed all this to make sense, what I got instead was another memory… this one more vibrant, more alive, and more realistic then the current 'world' around me…
I'm either six or seven years old. It is the middle of the night, and Mom and I are pulling up outside a little no name diner in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The stars in the sky are diamond cut bright, the night dark, the only other sources of light I can remember seeing, is a solitary streetlamp, yellow and clouded with insects, and the back door of the diner. (I think the diners already closed for the night, the parking lot is empty.) We get out, I'm holding onto my mom's hand because I'm too little to be by myself. Mom's all dressed up, smelling great and is pretty much the most beautiful woman that I know. Without a word between us, we walk towards the long portal of light at the diner's rear, its wash of yellow and clatter of pans spilling out across the night. We get there, still, silent as two church mice, hand in hand, and we watch dad, he's wearing jeans, a white tee shirt with it's sleeves rolled up, (of course), his hairs all sweaty, he's wearing this cap that's all kind of skewed, like it could fall off at any second, but somehow manages to hang in there. There's a hand rolled cigarette tucked behind his left ear, and he's elbow deep in a big stainless steel sink, suds and soap and steam all around him. We stand there like this for what seems like forever, but probably no more than thirty seconds. And I'm thinking, wow, this is so cool. Dad's busy as a bee, sweat is running down his forehead, his nose, and his forearms are slick with suds, soap and water, and I can tell right away he's in a hurry. Want to know why, because we're here, and he's the last to finish up, and more than anything he wants to dry his arms off and rush outside to hold mom and kiss her on the cheek and lips, (yuck!) and then they'll laugh together, and he'll whisper in her ear and she'll turn all red and glance my direction acting as if he'd somehow totally offended her by what he had just said, but inwardly loving every minute of it, while winking her eye at me as if we're sharing a deep dark secret.
The weirdest thing about all this, I don't remember how the night ends, only that mom and me are meeting dad outside the diner where he worked one hot summer night. The rest of the evening is pretty much not there. I'd ask her about this event, years later, after he'd died…
Instead of reliving her answer however, I began to relive the event…
She's been in her bedroom for over an hour, still dressed in her funeral 'best', her eyes red and mostly running. I'm down to my shorts and a tee shirt, ready to go outside, ready to go on with my life; ready to not be dead… but instead of running outside, I walk into the bedroom where she is. She's sitting on the bed, pale, older by far, having just buried her husband of sixteen some years, and she's got this old shoe box out, digging through pictures and cards, and she's turning these photographs over and over, black and white and curled, and she's reading the back of them, chicken scratch of pencil and ink, and I ask her what she's doing. She sniffs a bit, wipes her face and eyes with a couple of wadded and worn Kleenex's, she'd had since forever from looks, and tells me that she's 'looking through some pictures, reliving memories'. And for some reason that night at the diner comes up, and since in my mind it was one heck of a night, her and him laughing and all, us, as a family, sharing a moment away from the world, I bring up our meeting dad, and how pretty she looked that night, her hair in cascading amber curls, her dress whispering against her legs as she swayed, side to side, how she looked like a school girl heading towards her prom, or her fist date. And as I recollect my memories before her, she gets this look in her eyes; her lips pale and thin out, the lines around her mouth grow hard and serious.
I stop of course… well, more like stumble to a halt. I'm thinking I must have offended or hurt her… something serious for her mood to shift so quickly, so final.
“What in the world are you talking about,” she asks?
“Me and you meeting dad outside the diner where he worked that night,” I replied, my hands suddenly sweaty, the room much too hot. “Why?”
“You know why.” She states, her sorrow gone. “Who told you about that night?”
Now I'm the one confused, because she's staring at me with that look, the same look that she gave me the time me and my brother burned down a couple of haystacks in the neighbors field, behind our house in Garden City. (As a child I had lied about that incident. I had been too afraid to tell her the truth, how my brother and I, playing with fire while she slept, had carelessly laid a burning mop up against a haystack. Why, I don't know, my lying as well as the fact that two boys, aged seven and eight couldn't figure out that hay would burn if you laid something on fire up next to it.) So, with some effort, I recant the tale of that night again, just like I'd done before, and as I finish she cuts me off, especially at the part when we first arrived at the diner. She questions me over and over about the car, her dress, the time of night it was. What dad looked like, what he was wearing… everything that she could think of. I'm thinking she's lost her mind, her grief over his death had run too deep, or she'd just plain forgotten… but no. She suddenly gets defensive, her tone and her face, angrier, harsher by the minute, until I finally stop her by asking the obvious…
“Why? Why are you so angry? I'm sorry to have brought to light, what I thought, would have been pleasant memories of you and dad.”
You know what she tells me?
“I don't know why you're making all this up.” She says. And as I begin to mumble something about 'I'm not making it up, I should know, I was there.' She finishes by saying, “There is no way in heaven I could have remembered that.”
“But Mom,” I defend, “I can remember everything, down to the last, the way your hand felt, how hot it was that night, how the light seemed to pour from the screen door behind the diner.”
Shaking her head she continues, talking to me like I'm a small child, “Son, there's no way, you could have known that. What you are describing is the night I first met your father… it was our first date. In fact, I'd just met him earlier that day and promised him that I'd stop by at the end of his shift so we could talk.”
Now, I'm the one confused, talk about, 'no way'. However before I could say anything else, she finishes with, “So you can see why there could have been no way you were holding my hand that night… Honey, you weren't even born yet!” (In fact, you weren't even a twinkle in your old man's eye!)
