My father has been dead for 17 years now, as of today. He died from eating bad foods, and minutes after eating. They fished egg out of his mouth, as his last meal was eggs, bacon, toast, and home fries, each fried, cooked or basted with butter, shortening or cheese. But it is not such a bad thing to have a last good meal before death. The walls of his freedom had been closing in after a previous quadruple bypass, and he was slated to return to his job at Merrill Lynch the following morning. He was wondering if he could make it at all in his new weakened state. Instead he died on a Sunday while watching the morning political shows with his son.
His eyes rolled back as he tried to say something, his voice clicking and locking as his body spasmed. You rush to the phone. Help came and he died later at the hospital. I've yet to live longer than him and on days like this I wonder if I will.
The odd thought now is that he has been dead almost as long as I've known him when alive. Not only do I wonder where has he been all these years, and doing what, but I wonder what I have been all these years (to others). I feel slightly ashamed, and that I might disappoint him, or a greater accountant. One should not, I think, be worried about disappointing parents when you are past a certain age and when they no longer exist, but still, I often get the feeling I am being watched, and would hope that I am at least bringing joy to his heart if he is permitted to watch me from where he sits.
Midway into Mark Knopfler's "Speedway at Nazareth," I often tear up, and now is no exception. I should be asleep but I am not, up thinking thoughts, worrying, wondering what my life has become.
When I hear this song I think of my father, now dead, and imagine myself with him, and running with a host of people toward God standing upon some distant hill. It's an odd little vision. I picture me and hundreds, thousands of other people in this grassy plain. And up on the ridge there, to the right of the tree of life, God is waiting, and crowds of people are standing with him. They are waving and clapping and you can hear shouts of "Come on, come on" and "You can do it."
But we are not there yet. We are on the plain, and behind is some enemy. Even THE enemy. Milton's Satan, rationalizing away with "Aw come on folks." At first we are milling about. I am standing talking to my dad (even though he is already dead). Others are sitting, fingering dandelions and bored. People are hot, sweaty. Someone says, "Hey, that guy on the ridge is calling us," and points.
Some people look up and are like, "What's he saying?" Someone shouts, "I think that is Jesus." Slowly heads turn in that direction. I hear some fat lady saying, "My aunt Janie is up there" and she starts running. Three hundred pounds of fatness and each step takes her an inch, but she runs nonetheless. I turn to my dad and say, "Check her out" and several people are kind of laughing. But I look at her face and she is happy and waving her arms and though every part of her body is shaking like jello, she does not care anymore. She just wants to make it to the hill. "Heyo! I'm coming she says" and her steps get bigger and bigger and it almost looks like one of those moon walks, or leaping in a dream, where she is bounding further ahead, weight and all, yet weightless.
Her husband, who was standing indifferent smoking a cigarette just a second ago saying this was all complete bullcrap, yells out, "Baby wait for me" and he takes off running after her like a little a baby chick. People begin to get up and move in the direction of the hill. Some drift, others move briskly, but it is hard to ignore the people on the distant ridge jumping up and down and making such a commotion.
"Someone called my name" my dad says
"Really? I didn't hear anything," I respond as he stands up.
"I need to get up there. I don't think I can make it though. My heart. This thing will kill me but I have to go."
"Let's go then, " I say, and we begin walking. The whole crowd is on the move now.
Meanwhile Satan is standing, pissed. He begins to turn things dark behind us. The crowd looks back. At first we see just darkness and clouds. But then fearful things appear. I look back and see myself. My true self and am afraid.
"We gotta run," I say to my dad, and we start up a trot. Pretty soon everyone else is picking up the pace. I have never seen so many different types of people. Thin people, a group of Malays over there, a mother and her toddler, a skinny gawky kid who suddenly takes off toward the hill.
"Fuck this shit, I am running too," says some Marine looking type and I watch as his legs pump up and down all powerful like. Pretty soon he has caught up to the leaping fat woman and her husband, and they all look at each other and start laughing. Running, laughing, leaping. Mid stride she turns around and yells to us way behind, "Come on now. You can do it."
My father is tired. Sweat poring down his face. That ridge was farther than it looked. We stop. "I can't do this," my father says to me. "I can't keep going. I feel like my heart is gonna pop right out of my shirt."
"We have to keep going. That's God up there! Look at all those people up there. All those people who went before. Everyone we ever wondered about, everything we never knew. Every magic, mystery and spirituality becomes science and explained to us. Come on."
"I can't. Go son. If I see you make it, then I will be happy," my father says to me, and it makes me cry.
I lift him up in my arms in the way you see parents carry their little kids and run around the yard. I used to get spanked that way for bad report cards. He would hold me in his left arm, and spank me with the belt in his right. Eventually I got too heavy or the whole enterprise got too ridiculous and he took to just giving me the "disappointed face" and lecture instead. And now here I am picking him up.
I grab him in my arm, amazed that I can and I start trotting along and he is really heavy. I mean heavy. But as I am running people are running next to me, and past me. Some old lady with an elaborate hairdo fit for a king to live in as a palace turns to me and says, "Ya'll can do betta than that. Come on now. Don't let this ole momma beat you up that hill" and it makes me laugh and I start running faster. I still see the fat lady leaping ahead and notice that a lot of people are actually leaping now too.
"I've always wanted to do that," I hear a plump man nearby say and he just starts up into the air, whooping it up. "OMG. OMG." After leaping in place a while, he starts leaping forward and others follow his example.
"I wish I could leap like that." I wanted to leap like that in the same way I wanted to go into the ocean, or dance on a dance floor, or run around like a silly happy dog, with no other purpose than sheer joy of the moment.
I try to take leaps but my father is so heavy. "Leave me, and leap," he says and I tell him to be quiet. I attempt giant strides and notice that with each stride, I begin to cover more distance. "Leap Finn," I hear someone say from the distant hill and I take a huge jump step forward and me and my father are soaring through the air. All this weight, these pounds that I carry in daily life are no longer holding me down. I am leaping and my father is laughing like "What the hell" and pretty soon everyone is all energy: leaping, hopping, floating, bopping.
There is a whole contingent of little kids to my left who are hopping like rabbits, which is something to see, but not nearly as funny as their parents, who hop along too. A Chinese guy passes me backwards, moving faster backwards than some facing forwards.
"Why are you running backwards?" I ask, and he says, "The faces. I have never seen so many happy faces and it makes me know where I am going and why."
I start picturing that scene in Moses, where the Hebrews are fleeing the Pharoah, and everyone is helping everyone get to where they need to be. Physics seems to be broken. "It's not broken. It's the full effect that we are seeing," says my dad.
As each person reaches the ridge we see them stand and turn to the rest of us and wave us forward. But we can only see the people on the ridge and not beyond.
Eventually we arrive there and I am hot and tired but filled with joy and we look over and see billions that had been out of view. Finally my father and I stand on the edge with God, and we are looking down at the plain, and darkness against the far sky, and only Satan is there, hand on hips, shaking his head.
He begins to weave quickly across the plain and in seconds he stands in God's face. "I remember when we were friends," he says, "and you turned on us and left us alone to our dark selves. Where is your seventy times seven? Is there nothing for one like me?" God stands and stares and I wonder if such is even possible. God wipes his sleeve on his wet cheek. It's certainly not theological. "Can't you heal him and make him one of us?" some child asks.
***
