“he said ‘my absence is strong and warm. it will hold you. it will teach you how to miss. how to be without. and how to survive anyway.’ –how my father raised me” Yrsa Daley-Ward

Writer’s Note: Read the first part of my story here.

This past March, I found myself back in Prescott with my mom and mother-in-law, Kelly. Like me, Kelly finds joy in writing, which has allowed us to bond over the years. My mom and I attended her semiannual retreat titled A Promise to Heal, based on her book of the same title. Part memoir and part study, her books navigate grief and offer guidance on learning how to live and reidentify yourself with loss.

It has been one year since my father died. Those words, my father died, are no easier to say now than they were last July. They tumble out of my mouth or onto a page like foreign objects. Some days, they are less oppressive. Others, they leave me pale and fumbling to pull the sheets from my body after some terrible dream from which I’ll never awaken.

Yet, our trip to Prescott was source of a comfort in a year that was a mad and violent sea, an affirmation that healing occurs in small moments beneath my skin, even without my own recognition. The past does repeat itself, not only in bad times, but by God’s grace, also in good. And so, my father’s spirit is coming back to me.

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Two weeks ago, Sherman Alexie prematurely ended a book tour for his newest memoir You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, a cancellation that he reported in a tenderly written open letter to his readers. The memoir depicts his relationship with his late mother Lillian, who Alexie writes, “haunted me when she was alive and…has haunted me since her death in July 2015.” Likewise, my father has also become a ghost—one who finds constant ways to come back to me.

Arriving at Prescott’s historic district, I was acutely aware of his presence as we walked down Whiskey Row, finding engraved on a bar-front window, Because you’re mine, I walk the line. My dad had a wonderfully bass-toned voice, one without much range, but just enough to hit the lowest notes of any Johnny Cash song. He often sung “Walk the Line” to my mom, who stood beside me on that street corner with tears in her eyes. Later, Mom and I split a flight of beers at the Prescott Brewing Company, and I quietly let a soft ahh escape my lips, the way Dad often did after the first sip of a cold and rich stout.

Dad returned when we browsed Prescott’s many antique stores, an assortment for which the city is well known. Navigating skinny aisles and doorways that led to rooms that led into other rooms, a matrimonial maze of junk and treasures, I heard the voice of my Papa (Dad’s dad) ringing in my ears. The junkier, the better he would say, with a basement full of broken radios in Crossville, Tennessee.

After Papa died, Dad and my uncles spent hours clearing a pathway through that packed basement. It was only the first task of many long weeks spent sorting and preparing the radios for auction. The papers called Papa’s estate the largest private collection of antique radios that had become available to the public. It’s surprising how long it took me to understand why my dad, who only went shopping five times a year (trips to the bookstore not included) and always at the last minute, could still peruse an antique store for hours.

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In his open letter, Alexie goes on to state, “As I write in the memoir, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I see them all the time. … I don’t believe in magic, but I believe in interpreting coincidence exactly the way you want to. I don’t believe in the afterlife as a reality, but I believe in the afterlife as metaphor. And my mother, from the afterlife, is metaphorically kicking my ass.”

In the past, I could have been considered a couch-potato Catholic at best, and a non-committal agnostic at worst. After Dad died, I began to believe in the afterlife mostly as a means of emotional self-preservation. It’s possible that only I ascribe any sort of significance to these events. But walking out of our last antique store of the day, stepping into the sunlight and seeing Kelly standing at a bench holding an antique lamp, I thought twice.

Because this was no ordinary antique lamp. Google banker’s lamp and you’ll see what I’m describing—the hypnotic glow of those green glass shades atop a brass base, often cinematically portrayed in old libraries surrounded by stacks of aging novels. I’d been searching for one for months (not that I had found this worth mentioning).

“It was just sitting here,” Kelly said, motioning to the bench. “A gift for you,” she continued, I think somewhat jokingly, not realizing that I could’ve burst into tears taking that lamp from her hands. It was one of those surreal moments where the world spins around you, as I recall only faintly hearing Kelly describe how she had asked the store manager if it belonged to him, if perhaps someone had recently bought it and left it, to which he had no record.

If Alexie’s mother is metaphorically kicking his ass, then my dad is metaphorically beating me over the head with this entrancing and Godly lamp.

*

My father is a ghost, the only kind that fascinates me now. Since our March excursion, days or weeks go by where I feel nothing. Then, suddenly, I’ll be driving down the 17 Interstate at night, on my way home to Phoenix and watching tail lights whizz by in vibrant blurs. I’ll turn the radio dial to 100.7, and Lightfoot, Zappa, or maybe even Cash will echo over the crackling speakers. And every time, I’ll smile and lower the windows, and sing along if I know the words to these mystifying and beautiful hauntings.

*

Appendix:

Sherman Alexie’s open letter, which I reference in this story, is entirely worth the read, and quite possibly the most eloquently written cancellation notice of all time. You can read the full letter, posted to Facebook on July 13, here.

Featured image credit: Monica Mae Photography