The Ribbons of the Aurora

Are you out there?
Can you hear me?
Can you see me in the dark?

I don't believe it's all for nothing.
It's not just written in the sand.
Sometimes I thought you felt too much,
And you crossed into the shadowland.

And the river was overflowing,
And the sky was fiery red,
You gotta play the hand that's dealt ya,
That's what the old man always said.

Fallen Angel
Casts a shadow up against the sun
If my eyes could see
The spirit of the chosen one.

Fallen Angel, by J.R.Robertson

This is not a urban legend. It is my story, my experience. I had written down some years ago and communicated it in an e-mail to a friend. It has a political bent but that is not the gist of the post. What the post is about is that I believe there is something that lies beyond our plain of experience.

In 1983 I was 28 years old and living in a dive of a house. The place was something out of most late 1970s student’s college days; big, cold in the winter, hot in the summer and cheap. I was already an attorney but not much was happening for me. Seems I really didn't have the work ethic thing down just at that moment.

At the time I was actually living with a punk rock band named Free Cheese.
This moniker had to do with how Regan was dealing with the surplus of dairy goods then prevalent in our nation. As a side note the band members were all bi-sexual and routinely took group showers. It was awkward/interesting on those mornings I decided I had to shave. These mornings were not that frequent just then.

At the same time I was living in this odd Bohemian milieu, I was climbing the ranks of the Michigan Young Republicans. I was quasi living with a woman named hmmh, let’s call her Sara, just in case someday she decides to Google me.. Her dream was to groom me to be a good GOP soldier and to live the June and Ward Cleaver lifestyle. Ms. Sara’s aim was to move me up the political rungs and then she could stay at home and manage my political career. She actually got me as far as being the counsel to the Young Republicans for this state. I don’t know if my name ever went into the books because the arc of time involved was short.

I know it is hard to believe, me, a young Republican. The best way to describe it is probably in the terms my dear beloved wife Francie phrases it. This particularly odd chapter in my life can be ascribed to the politics of pussy. I was a Republican because it was getting me laid on a regular basis. Also Republican hospitality suites and fundraisers are much, much more decadent that Democratic ones. In this very odd time I even ended up a delegate to the state Republican convention one year.

Surely you wonder what has this got to do with the above piece of lyric, or perhaps why this is a response to you last note. Well, it is like this. At the time I was in this ardor (lust)-induced lapse of political reason I was spending a great deal of time at Sara’s farm house. It was a horse farm a distance away from the commune/band practice zone/law office. Well, while I was out there at her home one afternoon the telephone rang and it was one of my housemates telling me that my brother had called me.

For no particular reason, except maybe because the call had come midday, and this was in the days before unlimited minutes, I assumed something drastic had happened. My sole and unquestioned assumption was that my father had died. It took me forever to try and track my brother down because the nimrod I lived with hadn't got the number right. All this time my eyes were tearing up and I was choking up because I knew my Dad was dead. Finally, not ever getting my brother on the line I broke down and called home, something I didn't want to do.

When my father answered the phone I tried to put my best face on the call. We talked for a while about this and that. The conversation was on mostly nonsense kind of things. He had just come back from a trip to visit his mother. Understand my Dad was seventy-two then and his mother still lived alone in rural South Carolina and carried a rifle when she went out walking. She was a tough old broad at her 96 year old age. Finally my father asked me why I had called. Remember this is midday and talk wasn't cheap at the time. I laughed and said that this is going to seem kind of silly but I thought you had died.
He got a good chuckle out of that. Eventually he gave me my brother's phone number. Before I got off the phone I told him that I loved him and he told me he loved me back. Really, that is about the only time I remember him saying that to me. I am sure he must have said it before, but I don't have any real memory of it.

Called my brother and it was some nonsense that he wanted. I don't even remember any of the gist of it but it was really trivial. We talked a little while and hung up.

The next day I got another call at about the same time at the same place telling me to call my brother. Got a hold of him real easy this time. This time the call was much, much different. He was in tears and was losing it. As I am sure you have guessed long ago he called to tell me my father had died that morning.

Do I believe there is something that occurs after we die or near the time we die that is different from the fabric of everyday life? Yes. The above incident does not stand alone for me in this regard as to my reaching a yes on that question, but it sure went a long way toward it. Yes I believe there is something more, something mystical going on when we pass and thereafter. Like in the old Mike and Mechanics song, In the Living Years, or in the Larkin poem, there is some rent in the fabric of time and if we are at the right place or in the right mental space something happens. Maybe we sense something has changed. Maybe well feel compelled to make a phone call out of the ordinary. Maybe at that moment we see somebody now dead carrying the eggs they found on their way into the mine.

Do I have deeply held religious beliefs, absolutely. Do I proselytize, not really. Only by living do I communicate my belief structure. My mother has also died. Her death was different and not the sudden unexpected death of my father. Hers was a long, lingering decline. I am an orphan now but I am connected with a much broader universe than I ever thought possible.

Gotta go. Hope this isn't too strange.