Now before you go all logos or pathos on me, I have not been seeing any wraiths or spirits, at least not more than I usually do. Where I live, in Tucson, this month is a lead up to the All Souls Procession. This month, in my life, is a month when I think a lot about those who have left the world of the living, because of the many birthdays I would be celebrating with those people whose absence truly does create a void in my life.
I think my dad is the person in my close family with whom I most miss conversation, discussion, and story-telling. I didn’t really get to have all that many conversations with my dad when I was an adult. He was gone before I had a child and before I realized in mid-life that he and I were very much alike. A perfect impossible day would be spent with him under a split trunk box elder tree looking over the farm fields I knew as a youth . There would be lemonade and angel food cake. History, philosophy, and religion would be discussed in depth. Paradox and inconsistency would be noted. Eyes would twinkle. Family history and folklore would be dissected. Possible revisions would be made. It would be grand.
But, as I cannot live that impossibility, other than in pleasant thoughts, I have been listening to The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright, and The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek.
So you see, I am not really having conversations with a ghost. I am listening to and having thoughts about books that recreate, for me, the mind space that I’d like to think Dad and I would be sharing if we could talk. A ghost, a shade, a shadow of him is with me as I do this. It is comforting.
With so much of the universe missing, is it any wonder that we little humans try to construct meaning from the voids we note in our lives?