Poetic License

One day this week, as I tried to get through another long work day in one piece, as I tried to push through the fatigue and neck pain that accompanies my afternoons, I thought of an English teacher I had in junior high school — Mrs. Travis. Slight of stature, with an accent that lived somewhere between New England and Old England (though we were in Houston, TX), wrinkled of face, she likely did not know that I would think of her often in my own old age and that I would often quote her, in fact. In my mind, Mrs. Travis is as alive now as she was when I was diagramming sentences (and flirting furiously with a troublesome boy with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen) in her eighth grade classroom.

Just as though she were standing in front of me in her floral dress and black loafers, her red lipstick bleeding slightly into the wrinkles that surrounded her mouth, Mrs. Travis is present each time I shudder when someone uses “dove” as the past tense of “to dive.” That, my friends, is an incorrect word for the sentence, “I outlined the topic for my slides, and then I dove right in.” The correct word is dived. Mrs. Travis appears in my mind’s eye and says, “A D-O-V-E is a little bird you hold in your hand.”

Is her flesh alive and standing in front of me? No. But is that what it means to be alive? Also no.

Byron Katie once said to me, after I told her about my late daughter, Stephanie, at a book signing, “Thank you for sharing your daughter’s story with me. Each time you do that with someone, your daughter lives.” What she meant was that a person is every bit as much alive in this world as they were in the past each time you remember them, memorialize them, speak of them or share a funny anecdote from when they were physically present. It was one of the kindest things anyone said to me in the years after my daughter died.

We as humans tend to understand aliveness as the physical presence of someone–to a point. We understand that if we call someone on the phone, or text or email or otherwise “ping” them, they exist in this plane with us, even if we can’t touch them or see them with our eyes. We do have a need to see them, however, so we put a picture of them in our contacts directory so we see that image whenever we call, text, or email. We fool ourselves into having them in touching distance with these images. When Stephanie died, I kept her phone number in my contacts list, along with a picture of her. It was comforting. In fact I still have her in my contacts list, though the image was lost. I wonder how many of you keep your mother or father in your list the same way. But deep down we know they are gone – at least from this physical plane. Do they still exist, however?

What I’m getting to is an ontological question: what does it mean for something (or someone, in this case) to exist? When we’re babies, we begin to learn the lesson of object permanence. We learn through games such as peekaboo that when mama hides her face, her face (and mama) doesn’t go away. We later play hide-and-seek, knowing that, even though someone hides from us, they are not gone. Rather they are just waiting to be found. Can we not begin to understand that even if someone dies, they are not gone?

The field of metaphysics, often associated only with the supernatural, dives into this question. What does it mean to exist? What is consciousness? I can tell you that I often feel my daughter with me. Likewise, my father sometimes appears to me in dreams. Occasionally I’ll see my mother in dreams, but not as often. Our relationship ended on a better note than the one between my dad and I, which is perhaps why she doesn’t appear as often. At times, though, I feel that if I try to, I can see my daughter out of the corner of my eye. She’s right there.

My cousin who died in 1982 came to me incessantly in dreams to tell me she didn’t kill herself, which was something her parents believed she had done. She urged me to tell her mother. It took a couple of years before I was brave enough to do so. Though I hadn’t experienced it myself, I thought my aunt would be so heartbroken over the loss of her baby girl that she wouldn’t be able to bear the conversation. When I finally worked up the nerve to talk to her, she received the message calmly. She seemed to believe me. The reason my cousin’s death was ruled a suicide and closed quickly was to spare her young son a long, drawn out investigation. Her brother and I have always believed she was murdered by her husband, who was rumored to be having an affair with the woman he married six months after my cousin’s death. He has been married to multiple women since. And the young son they were trying to protect grew up being beaten by his father, neglected by the stepmothers, and eventually became a criminal. the last picture I saw of him was from a prison in Florida, where he was serving time for armed robbery.

My cousin is still more real to me than her child is. My daughter is more real than anyone else. Because they were here, they are still here.

I’m interested to hear from you. What do you think of any of this? Have you ever remembered someone so clearly that it is like they are in the room with you? Why do we humans believe someone exists if we can interact with them in the physical world but believe they are gone if we no longer have reciprocal communication? What other ways do you feel someone exists? What does it mean to exist?

Consider all of this and then consider whether you have a Mrs. Travis in your memory who appears from time to time to correct someone’s use of language.

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!

Namaste,
Jude