The Other Side

“Mom, I’m good. I’m OK.”

I wish she could hear me. I wish she knew I was right here beside her. Right now—riding shotgun in her twenty-year-old Lexus SUV, with the lingering scent of her mother’s pungent perfume. It’s where I learned to drive, though later than most.

It’s so hard to watch her sometimes—

I did not mean for this to happen. I didn’t plan it, but I didn’t stop it either. I was only twenty-six. I’m here—in this other place—where time doesn’t exist. You won’t understand until you know.

“Things are good, mater dear. Really. I’m OK.”

I am here but not anywhere—like Clarence, the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, one of Mom’s favorites. I was never a fan, but now, it makes more sense. I’m not sure why I’m thinking about the holidays. I’m feeling more sentimental than usual. I never wanted to hurt her. Eight years on, the pain still cuts her open.

Life has never been easy for my mom. She tried so hard, and I never really thanked her. I didn’t know how. I do know she loved Ian and me, but my motorcycle—not so much. In that moment, on that gorgeous Sunday afternoon in August, it was the only thing that mattered to me—my mania gone awry. She always tried to psychoanalyze me, but my demons were not hers to conquer. Plus, I hated her constant attempts to tame them with pharmaceuticals. I had the evidence—no one knew how they worked.

She’s still ruminating, now foraging through my digital remains. That won’t help her though. I wish she could find peace.

“Mom, there is absolutely nothing you could have done to change what happened. Nothing.” I speak louder. “Can you hear me?”

Driving is hard on her: old songs, old places, and old versions of us.

“Don’t cry, Mom. See, I’m playing ‘Tell Me Something Good’ by Rufus on the radio. It’s one of your favorite saxophone tunes. Mine, too.” She smiles and cries at the same time.

“What’s done cannot be undone, as the Bard says. He sends his salutations, by the way, in iambic pentameter.” She’d laugh at that.

“Oh, Elliot, I know you are winking at me, but where are you? I miss you so much it aches.” She turns up the radio.

The mediums have tried to tell her too. There is a greater agenda that mere earthlings cannot possibly comprehend. I was skeptical about all the woo-woo stuff, but I am on the woo-woo side now, and it’s pretty dope.

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Turns out, all three of us were into the woo-woo stuff—The Twilight Zone New Year’s Marathon was our annual ritual. We always loved the one where a young Billy Mumy is celebrating his birthday, and his grandmother gives him a plastic toy telephone. She dies suddenly and then begins talking to him on the toy phone from the other side. A little creepy, but it seemed totally plausible.

Mom kept my cell phone for nearly three years after I left, even paying the AT&T bill every month. That’s a little psycho if you ask me. Did she think I was going to call her from another dimension, hanging out with Billy Mumy’s grandmother? I’m not sure, but it felt like The Twilight Zone. I think that’s where she lives.

But back to the mediums.

She was visiting a psychic called Jo, a friend of one of her Unitarian grief pals. Jo claimed to channel an ancient spirit named Isaiah. This was not an official church event, of course, but Jo came to town “under the radar” every few months to do readings.

Feeling anxious but curious, my mom walked into the 1970s ranch-style house in North Dallas. It was decorated in fringy tans, avocado greens, and a cloud of patchouli.

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Jo (Isaiah) takes a swig from her giant yellow water bottle, then tucks her gray streak behind her right ear. “How can I help you today?”

Mom looks down at the pad she brought to take notes. “I want to know how my son, Elliot, died. There are so many unanswered questions.”

“I see…Isaiah is saying you shouldn’t focus on what happened. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Oh…OK, but I need more information.” My mom shifts to the edge of the beige Naugahyde recliner.

“That is obscured, hidden, but I see a young man flying over an elevated highway ramp. That’s all I have. Sorry.” Jo seems to lose air for a second. “But you are still connected—just in different ways.”

“That’s what I have been trying to tell you,” I say. “Listen to her.”

I wonder if Isaiah heard that.

Jo sits up straight. “Isaiah is saying you need more support in your life, an inner circle. You are worthy of being loved.”

“Was there a crash? Someone else involved?” Mom says as she sets her pad on the glass coffee table between them.

“Elliot is saying…’It’s best to leave the deed unexplained.’”

“What does that mean?” Mom asks.

“I’m seeing some flashes on the road… the bottom of a car. Turned over… there’s mud, debris…”

“I don’t think there was a car. No evidence at the scene.”

Jo removes her maroon readers and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Well, this is not the kind of reading I usually do…But I do know a soul does not leave its body without its permission.”

Mom looks stunned. I can’t tell if those words helped or hurt.

Jo squints. “Elliot loved speed. He had difficulty with constraints.”

“But he was also a rule-follower,” Mom adds.

Ha, I pulled one over on her.

“Forgive him and yourself,” Isaiah says. “Don’t bind your life to this event. Elliot chose every step along the way.”

“OK, thank you…I guess.”

“I’m sorry there wasn’t more to say…”

Mom thanks her because Mom always thanks people. She gets back in the car and just sits. She grabs the worn leather steering wheel and shakes it like she wants to rip it out of the console. Then, she lets out a wail that rattles the windshield.

“Mom…mom… I’m still here.”

I wish I could call her on the phone for real—just one more time, and not a text, either. Maybe we can find our own plastic toy phone.

“Can you hear me now, Mom? Where’s AT&T when you need them? Mom, just breathe. Can you hear me through the static and the fog? Maybe through a tiny sluice in your consciousness.”

Her head is still resting on the wheel, and she doesn’t turn on the radio or start the car. It’s her favorite place to cry.

“I can hear you, Mom.”

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My parents split up when I was seven, and Ian was three. Our old house sold in a day, so Mom found a townhouse to rent in Oak Cliff near Dad. After we moved, Mom started something called “talk time.” At bedtime, Ian and I got into our bunk beds under our blue Pokémon sheets, and she sat with us in the dark for a while. She told us we were safe, and we could ask her anything.

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“Where does God live?” I ask. I am usually the one who talks more during “talk time.”

She seems surprised and a little flustered. She takes a breath.

“Well, God lives…in you, in me, in Ian—and in all of us. In Talulah and Poncho, too.”

Cool how she included the pets, but she didn’t say heaven.

“Even in Dad?” I ask.

Her eyes get teary. “Yes, even in Dad.”

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We lived with Mom most of the time. We didn’t go to Dad’s too much because his house was too messy. Our life was pretty chaotic, just a different kind from when we were a family. Entropy, again, always entropy. I didn’t have words for it then, but even from the top bunk, I could tell that no one was riding shotgun for her.

“Mom, you said ‘I love you’ to me and Ian all the time. Sorry I couldn’t say it back. There is so much I never told you. I was mostly an echo chamber of myself.”

I wish I had said more—

When we had time.

The line is always open.

“Are you there?”

“Can you hear me?”