A Morning Walk - To The Other Side

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A Morning Walk – To The Other Side By John Maes reedsy 1

A glorious morning seemed to be at hand as I stepped outside for a walk. A few cloud patches floated above but they did little to hide the brilliant blue of the sky. The sights and sounds of summer abounded. A hummingbird hovered near me. A small airplane droned lazily overhead. A mower engine sputtered in the distance, scenting the air with the aroma of newly-cut lawn.

I wanted badly to adopt the mood of the morning as my own but I just couldn’t. My nerves were completely raw from the stresses of the day before when a doctor’s visit turned into a scolding about my cholesterol, blood-pressure and triglyceride levels: all way too high for my 60-something year-old-old system. Later in the day, a backyard cookout devolved into a verbal brawl between my sister and I, helping my metabolic numbers not at all.

I had begun walking with a purpose hoping the positive endorphins would soon kick in when a vision stopped me as quickly and certainly as if a brick wall had been there. A not unfamiliar figure was beside me.

“Dad?” I said.

“How ya doing, Jan? Mind if I walk with you?”

“S-sure, of course.”

I was standing still - frozen in shock ¬¬¬¬ — my lips quivered but I could form no words.

Dad motioned me to keep moving. “C’mon, don’t stop.”

All that prevented me from being completely stupefied was that this incident was not without precedent. Dad had actually appeared to me from the beyond twice previously in recent months. Both times were in the quiet and dark of the wee hours in my man cave. Then, he was little more than a colorless visage, staying only long enough to make some obscure remarks about how he liked my second wife better than my first and how he liked the way I decorated the condo since inheriting it from them years ago.

This appearance, however, was different. He was not simply the amorphous floating mass that I saw before. Here was my father of an earlier era - seemingly in the flesh head to toe. He was not young – but not old either. With hair still on his head and eyebrows, he appeared as I remembered him before his 50th year when severe Alopecia claimed every single, solitary strand of hair on his body. And he walked with not unsubstantial vigor. It was a far cry from the debilitating last several years of life when struggles with a leg infection impeded his gait and pained his every step, eventually crippling and killing him.

Dad kept pace with me as we stepped onto the trail but we said nothing to one another for several moments. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do. Were my mind and imagination just playing tricks on me? Or, was this some ridiculous apparition that would soon just disappear?

But a moment or two later when I did speak, only a single ridiculous question came out. “Y-you’re walking great. Your leg doesn’t hurt?”

“Nope, feels fine,” he replied.

“W-well what brings you around? How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I just sort of woke up and here I am.”

“But I don’t get it,” I said. “The last two times I saw what even looked like you, it was just like a mist. Now, it’s like your old self is here. You’re actually walking and talking with me. How is it happening?"

“I don’t know how it happened but there is a reason. I need to talk to you about something.”

His tone and suddenly stern look immediately told me that the million or so questions a guy wants to ask when visited by his father’s apparent ghost would have to wait. I seemed to have been knocked back into my childhood, about to be on the receiving end of a lecture.

“Oh? Like what?” I asked, making no attempt to harbor my suspicions about his purpose.

He didn’t answer right away. I could feel the beginnings of perspiration through my shirt and on my brow. The pebbles of the trail crackled rhythmically underfoot as we went. The only noise and sweat seemed to be coming from me —none from my walking partner.

Then he spoke. “I saw what went on with you and your sister last night and I didn’t like it. I’m tired of you guys always at each other’s throats. When the hell are you two gonna patch things up and quit fighting all the time?”

“You saw it?! What do you mean you saw it? How could you? You’re supposed to be…….. I mean, I thought you were dead. We buried you.”

His response stopped me again, just short of that brick wall I thought I’d run into moments earlier.

“I’m telling you I was there. I watched it.”

Dad – living or dead – proceeded to describe in detail, the whole rancorous affair, just the way it happened: every profanity-laced tirade, every litany of accusations, all the name-calling, the ultimatums, the threats. He had also borne witness as I stormed out of the house, walked briskly to my car roiling the entire neighborhood with my spinning, squealing tires as I sped away.

In a morning full of bewilderment, the fullness of dad’s depiction of the familial firefight astonished me yet again. Knowing the futility of wailing in my disbelief, I resigned myself: An old-fashioned father and son discussion was underway – during which ‘Once Upon a Time ‘– I would have done almost none of the talking.

But this was now, not then. I was not a kid anymore. I was a grown man - even more than just a grown man – I was in my mid 60’s and not a whole lot younger than he was at death. So I shot back in anguish about the perpetual toxic relationship between my sister and I. “She always starts it. She just can’t seem to help making snide comments about how I’m a spoiled brat and you always favored me over her.”

He locked his gaze on me and pointed his index finger as sharply as I had ever seen him do in life. His voice rose as he spoke. “You were yelling and name-calling just as bad as she does. I’m tired of watching it. I wanna see you guys knock it off once and for all, you got me?”

Indeed, I was my father’s son. His hair-trigger temper was mine as well as his. But, like me, Dad had the capacity to calm down almost as quickly as he flared up. So I started carefully. “Listen, I’ll try harder to cool it — no matter how nasty she gets with me — I promise. OK? I just hope you’re going to have this same conversation with her sometime.”

His voice was now softer and more even-keeled. “I promise I will – and very soon.”

I suddenly felt the pliant, supple, more likable side of our relationship coming into play once again. I could sense that his hackles had indeed come down. After all, he earlier used his pet name for me: ‘Jan.’ it was a shortened form of his, and my first name, ingrained in his western European upbringing. Hearing it – instead of being addressed as ‘mister,’ ‘pal’ or ‘buddy boy,’ which usually preceded a bitching out, I knew I’d have little to fear. To the contrary. I could expect a relatively stress-free – perhaps even lighthearted or humorous conversation. The harangue, the sermon, the jeremiad detailing my misdeeds did not appear to be at hand. So now, I wanted more discussion of that sort while he was still with me — yet not with me – and in the right frame of mind for it.

Thus, I pivoted sharply to a subject area other than that of my own behavior, hoping we could leave this brother-sister unpleasantness behind. “Have you seen Mom at all,” I asked?

“Not since she came over,” he said matter-of-factly,

“What do you mean, ‘came over?’”

He shot me a glance. “Came over to this side, ya’ follow?”

I nodded as he continued.

“I know I wasn’t the best husband that ever lived but I thought maybe she’d show up once in a while — and we’d both wake up and get to talk to each other - at least about what’s going on with you and your sister - and what might have to be done to end it.”

“But she was crazy with grief when you died,” I replied, both in puzzlement, and an attempt to finally ashcan the sibling feud issue hovering above us. “You should have seen it. She didn’t get over you for a long, long time. Cried her eyes out damn near every day. And it’s been near twenty years now since she passed. Look, If all this is real, it’s hard to believe you two haven’t seen each other.”

A sudden brainstorm induced me to pivot the conversation once again – this time to a realm where I knew he could as easily erupt in laughter as he could boil over in anger. “I know what it could be. Maybe she’s got a boyfriend,” I said with a twinkle.

He began chuckling – then threw his head back – chortling so hard we had to stop walking for a minute. Like a pitcher laying a lazy curveball over the plate to a power hitter, I had found his wheelhouse for humor once again.

“Maybe you’re right, Jan,” he said, now in a roaring guffaw. “I sure as hell hope it’s someone younger and better-looking than me with more hair on his head.”

I joined into the spirited sequence of hooting, snorting and backslapping between us. Not since the day he broke 90 at Big Bend Creek and birdied the last three holes had I seen Dad so giddy. When a car passed by it dawned on me: the driver must have gotten a good look at me performing the spectacle of a grown man standing alone on a street corner buckled in convulsive laughter.

Once our composure returned, we were walking again, the pebbles crackling beneath my feet – and still only below my feet. The subdivision entrance appeared up ahead. The walk would soon be over.

The heat had increased quickly and now seemed to be an almost searing intensity.

“Can you stick around for a while? Come on in and cool off?” I asked, pulling my T-shirt to my brow to wipe the accumulated sweat.

“No. I’m not hot. Gotta go as soon as we finish.”

“Coming around again sometime?”

“I don’t know. Can’t say when.”

We reached the front door. I smiled at him. I considered for a moment how rich and philosophical a conversation we could have. We’d have lots of them in his later years, sometimes over a brandy or cognac. There we’d be: man to man, adult to adult. It would be in the present day when I knew so much more, not the before when he was alive and I knew so little. The father-preaching-to-son thing was no longer a concern. I wanted that good kind of dialog with him - badly. Yes, his admonishments to me were sometimes harsh and often did hit me hard. But his praise and approval could be so much more satisfying. And he was capable of that as well.

I all but implored him. “Why can’t you stay for a while? I mean, damn, there’s so many things we could talk about. So much has happened since you left. Some of it bad, some of it good. But just to talk for a bit, I………….”

He waved a hand and interrupted. “Look, from time to time I get to see a little of what you’re up to, and I think you’re doing OK – in fact you’re doing fine. Just live on, keep going and enjoy what you’ve got while you’ve got it. But as much as I’d like to, I just can’t stay. Don’t ask me why.”

I played the only card I had left. You want to sit and have a beer for a little bit?” I asked.

Suddenly he was bellowing again. “Beer? Before lunch? You’ve got to watch it with that stuff, pal! I saw your doctor’s appointment yesterday too!”