Dead Men--and Women--Talking

Yesterday, my friend Biking Bob dropped off an article written about my dad shortly after his death.  The newspaper was tucked carefully between two pieces of cardboard, its contents identified by Bob's loopy, unmistakable handwriting as something we might like to have.

I read through the article this morning,  and learned a thing or two about my dad that I'd either forgotten or had never known in the first place.  First--and most surprising--was his age when he died.  I thought he was 67, but the article said he was 68.  Had I shortchanged him a year or was it a typo?  I'm not really sure.  And I didn't realize he'd taught journalism in Ohio, as well as to prisoners in Nebraska.  Joe R. Seacrest, his former boss at the Lincoln Journal, was quoted in the article as saying how funny my dad was, and what an advocate he was for the First Amendment.  These things, of course, I already knew.

I didn't know Allen McCutcheon, the 66-year-old former UNL professor who died in a swimming pool the other morning.  But I read the story about him this morning, and was moved by accounts of how much he had lived and loved in this life of his.  A workmate described him as someone who connected well with others.  His daughter spoke of a man who loved traveling, cooking, life.  A master swimmer, people were taken aback that he'd died in water.

I imagine the water as warm and calm and quiet. Womb-like.  And I hope that's what it was like for him. Full circle, in gentle, ever-widening arcs.

Ghosts, it seems, have been a theme for me this morning.  Mary Kay's met me halfway up the block, as I eyed the chalk marks in the middle of the street, appalled that young kids had laid down and drawn outlines of themselves in a space reserved for traffic.  We had a good laugh over that one.

Then Andrea's whispery fingerprints showed up all over my library office this morning.  Two crocodiles stared at me, while the weird-looking bookworm--another gift from her--curled up at the edge of my desk.  And, for some reason, my hand was drawn to the middle drawer, where I ran my fingers across a package of Sharpies bequeathed to me by Andrea in her final days.

I am surrounded by the ephemera of lives lived and loved and not quite lost just yet.  By the comforting swirl of warm waters and the surprise of cackling laughter.  By the sight of a familiar gait in a stranger and old stories finding new light once again.

Life is messy and beautiful, complicated and simple.  Usually, all at once.  It is the opposite of linear, a fistful of stars scattered wildly into the night sky.  And I must look like a fool sometimes, with my eyes wide open and my mouth agape, gulping it in as fast as I can. Quenching this thirst to remember.