4-28-2020: On my Dad’s birthday, 6 years ago, just a few days after he died, and feeling particularly attached to him and crushed by the weight of missing him. I was standing in his beautiful Venice Beach studio, sorting things. This serene office was where he’d written his books and articles every day and it was filled with memories, books, and objects from his far-ranging travels. Outside the sky was deep blue, the afternoon sun slow and hot, there was no breeze coming in from the deck that was covered with a wild array of brilliant pink bougainvillea and morning glories.
And as I stood silently in the middle of the floor, tears flowing from me, a book flew off the shelf and landed at my feet, open to the back fly-leaf. There, in Dad’s familiar back-slanted, left-handed scrawl, were written these words: “The shadow that dogs our lives is death of course. But what is the shadow of death, if not life?”
People who have died love where they are. They don’t feel dead — they feel finally themselves again after years of being encased in what we call physicality. I can feel my father’s presence whenever I need it, as strongly as I felt it when he lived thousands of miles from me, or when we lived a few rooms apart. We are separated by thought now, but otherwise we are as close as we ever were.
Going through papers, letters, and manuscripts later that same day, I discovered a map I’d drawn at age 2 or 3, long before I could write. I hadn’t seen it before, but realized my parents had kept it through all those years of traveling, moving, repeatedly shedding most of what they owned, had saved it for this moment, handing it back to me, as it were, when I needed the reminder.
My father had titled it: “A Wyddy map which I have annotated according to her instructions.” As I examined it more carefully, I saw there was a place “where they keep the flowers.” And another section “where they keep the light.” Then I saw “the sky.” And there was a single orange line which was “the path up to God.”
