For My Father
It is 6 years today since my father died. I have taken to lighting a Guadalupe Virgin Easter candle on May 1 every year, as I did when I found out he had died suddenly and alone 3000 miles away. I talk to him and ask Her to look out for him, wherever he is and whatever form he is in now, and I let the candle burn all the way down. I sense he has incarnated again already, and I have thought much about the ethics of calling on a loved one in their old personality when they have begun to create a new life with a new name. I know the soul probably experiences living all its lives at once and has no problem orchestrating the logistics, probably doesn't even grasp the idea of overlaps like this. The linear definition of lives is just too narrow. But I want to be respectful. I think back to going into his home in Florida as executor of the estate, and sitting at his desk to begin to make sense of things. It was a couple weeks later, and the desk flip calendar was turned to May 1. He had paid all his bills that day, taken friends who had helped him out for an early dinner as a thank you, and everything was in order. His desk was neat. He came home and sat down in his chair and his heart gave out. They found him four days later.

I had no warnings, psychic as I am supposed to be. But that day I couldn't work on my book or concentrate, and just paced around the house. Finally I decided to go see a movie, and ended up watching "Frequency," about a man talking to his dead father across time. I think my father didn't want anyone to interfere with his exit, didn't want the flood of emotions that would come. So he blocked everyone. Being in that movie at the exact time he was dying was as close as I could get to him. After I finished in his office and house, and took possession of his ashes in their plain little cardboard box, which he wanted me to take care of, I wrote this:

Time to leave your home
for the last time
closing all the doors like a ritual
I take your ashes,
your little, simple, condensed self,
and I say out loud:
"Let's both go now.
Let's just go."