COUNTING OFF THE YEARS WITH A BOOK OF THE DEAD
/The Boston Globe
I haven't put my father in my dead book yet. A hard word, "dead." A word you want to camouflage with softer words: deceased, departed, passed on.
But dead is the right word because dead is hard, people you love not in the next room, or the next town, or on the telephone saying, “I miss you.” “I love you.” "Do you know I'm the only one in the world who can call you daughter?"
My dead book began not as a spiritual reminder that none of us is long for this world, but as an organizational tool, a place to keep the memorial cards you get at wakes and funerals and put in your pocket and go home and don't know what to do with.
For decades, I kept mine in a shoebox, but what good was that? Occasionally, I'd take them out and look at them, mostly on New Year's Day, when I am perennially struck by nostalgia and resolve. But one year it dawned on me that the purpose of these cards is to keep the memory of the dead, not tucked away for annual inspection, but with us every day. And so I taped them into a blank book. And as I did, I read each. Some have prayers on their reverse side, some have poems, a few have pictures. Every one of them gave me a quiver, a flashback, a tap on the shoulder, a whisper of something promised. That’s that, I thought. Mission accomplished, I said pit loud when I’d taped in the last card.
What I didn't know then is that a book for the dead is a living thing and that grows the way children grow right in front of you. But you don't see.
I kept saving and taping every new card, every remembrance with its pithy wisdoms: "The great and sad mistake of many people is to imagine that those whom death has taken leave us."
"My soul rejoices each time I remember you, for you are someone I love."
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
One day I decided to add photographs to my book. I began with my mother, one photo before her accident and one after. I liked looking at my mother young, out in the sun, somewhere in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I liked remembering her should in that body. I added my mother-in-law’s picture because I liked looking at my mother-in-law with her husband and daughter and sister, squeezed together on a couch, the three of them happy and happy still just in a place where a camera can't go. I like looking at my Aunt Lorraine, my grandmothers, Father Coen, Sister Grace, and my dog, Molly.
It's harder to look at the children. Children test your faith. Life and death two sides of the same coin, yes, but why were their lives so short? Amy Sahlin. Kristin Murphy. Kate Gaughan. Cianan and Cecilia Murphy. Andy Malacaria and Elizabeth Marie Tracy. I look at their pictures, I read their obituaries, and I pray for all the people who love them. Mr. Bright, Mrs. Merlin, Rita and Mac, Kevin Sexton, Mary Blake, Mary Kowalski, Millie Grasso, Mr. Zogalis, Arthur Nolan, Pete Nolen, Lois Batchelder, Harriet Gotschalk, the Bernazzanis, Mr. and Mrs. Galvin, Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor so many neighbors and friends fill my book.
Richard Ross has two pages. He died on Sept. 11, 2001. He was in the first plane that crashed into the Twin Towers. "Daddy, you are my long drive, my slow dance, my summer wind, and my starry sky," his daughter, Abigail, said at his memorial. "We share eyes and hands and now my heartbeat. So long as I live, so will your many memories and the stories I tell. Edith Wharton wrote, `There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror which reflects it.' Daddy, you are my light and I am your mirror."
My father died 11 weeks ago. I keep expecting him to call. "`Hi, Dad." "Hi, Daughter." I have his memorial card, his obituary, his picture, and words that he left. But I haven't put them in my book yet. "Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glint on snow. . . . Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die."
He left this poem in an envelope for his wife. There is the thinnest of lines between the living and the dead. A few breaths and we're the same. Life has no end. It simply changes. That's what Christianity teaches. And that's what my dead book, with its pictures, poems, and prayers, helps me to believe.
