The ancients said that on Halloween, the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest,  it is possible for the living and the dead to speak to one another.

So I went for a walk in the deep woods this afternoon, and I decided to speak with some of the ghosts from my past, to see through the thin veil and talk to some of the dead in my life.

___

My Mother

I talked with my mother, who I  did not see in the last few years of her life. I heard her voice coming from the other side of the birch tree, and I recognized it right away. My mother was as full of recriminations as she was of love, and I expected a scolding for staying away from her in those last years.

I told her it was good to hear her voice, that I was sorry for her hard life, she was always so unhappy, blocked at every turn by the power men had over her. I told her I believe the reason I am a writer is that for all of our troubles, she always told me that she loved my stories, and that they are good.

I told her that I know how many people – especially women – struggle to find their voices, and I see that you have me my voice, and the strength to share my stories and believe they are important. I told her that I found love late in life, and that I never stopped looking for it. I am so sorry you never found it, I said.

There was silence,and then she answered me back, she said, I am glad you found love. I have read every word of every one of your books, and you are a wonderful writer.

I loved you fully and without reservation, to my last breath. Whatever I did to cause our distance and separation, I am sorry for it. I was just trying to find love myself and I never could. Thank God you did.

 

My Father

– I heard my father’s voice up in the trees, coming down on me. How are you, son, he said, he never once in his life called me by my name. I never spoke to my father much after I was about eleven years old, and he called me a sissy that day for the last time. I understood somehow that in order to save myself, I had to get away from him, he was one of those men who loved everyone but the people closest to him, they were just too close. I never knew what to say to him, he never knew what to say to me.

This is awkward, I said, I don’t know what to say.

I don’t either, he said. Are you happy. I think the media is covering the election all wrong.

Yes, I said, I am happy, I found someone I love and who loves me, and work that I love. I always thought Freud was right, it is work and love.

I’m glad, he said. You know, I was always surprised by your talent and your success.

I know, I said, you told me many times. I think the way to leave this, I said, is to have our first honest talk. I was not the son you wanted, you were not the father I wished I had. You did the best you could, I think I did too.

I think we have to leave it at that. There is no love in my heart for you, even know, here, through all this time. I believe in forgiveness, I wish I could feel it. I hope you are at peace, talking politics, playing tennis and basketball, doing the things you always loved to do.

Be happy, he said, shrugging in resignation. He did try. I always wanted the best for you, he said. And then, silence. I didn’t know why he came.

___

Grandma

Perhaps I saved my grandmother for last. She loved me as much or more as any human ever loved me until Maria came along, and maybe even then Minnie Cohen loved me more her love was so pure and available.

This time, I saw her face, it was floating right in front of me on the path up into the hills. “Grandma,” I shouted,and then realized that I was so much louder calling out to her than I was to my parents, my voice sounded so much happier. “Grandma, I’m glad you are here on the path. You might have seen me walking her with my wife, Maria. I married her six years ago.”

My grandmother had tears in her eyes, as did I, we were so happy to see each other, we brightened the lives of each other in hard times. She was holding some candy, some tootsie rolls and red dots and licorice, I took the candy, I didn’t tell her I had diabetes and couldn’t eat those candies any more I thanked her and put them in my camera bag.

She glanced over at the dogs – they couldn’t see  her – and shook her head, she never liked dogs much, and couldn’t imagine having one in her house. This was, I think, a hold over from Russia, where dogs and Jews were not friends to one another. How strange life is. I didn’t have the heart to explain to her what a border collie or therapy dog was.

My grandmother smiled shyly at the idea of Maria, she asked me about her, and she could be shy with strangers, they would never meet.  I told her about Maria, and she seemed to know her and who she was.

She looked at me carefully…Yes, I said, she is a gentile, a shicksa. I married a gentile, I know you told me never to marry one, they didn’t cook or clean, but we are very much in love and very happy together.  She is an artist, I said, you would love her potholders (My grandmother loved potholders.)

My grandmother was not a hater, but she had no love of gentiles, in her world, they were never good news. She sincerely believed that Christian women were never taught how to keep house or cook a meal. Since she knew no Christian women well, I’m not sure how she came by this belief but she was firm about it. Marry a Jewish girl, she told me.

“Does she cook for you, this Maria?,” my grandmother asked. “Does she keep a clean house?”

I shook my head. She hates to cook or shop, I said, and we hired someone to clean the house every week or so, Maria does not like to do it. My grandmother was shocked at the idea of a stranger cleaning her little apartment, or my farmhouse. I wonder if she had seen the farm.

Women are different now, they don’t live just to serve men,  I said,  they live their own lives. My grandmother frowned a bit. I think the  idea of love and marriage was strange to her, I don’t think it came up much in her generation.

“She’s cute,” she said, “she has a nice smile. She makes you happy?”

She does, I said. My grandmother smiled, and shrugged, that was familiar to me. If she knew nothing else, she knew to accept what she could not change. And she was always happy for me when I was happy, and she perhaps saw me unhappy so often she must have felt good about me now. I hope so, she sure saved me when I needed saving. She nodded, wiped some tears from her eyes, and she left some more candy along the path. “Goodbye, Johnny,” she said, she always called me Johnny. No one else has ever called me that.

I felt one of her long and warm hugs, and I knew we were both crying, so I said goodbye. She went back through the veil.

I asked her how she was, where she lived, but she didn’t answer, she just slipped back through the veil. No one would answer that for me.

_____

Rachel

Back in the woods, behind an old stone wall, I saw the face of Rachel, a beautiful young woman I knew and loved a long time ago in Manhattan, before it was so rich, when young people poured into the city from everywhere and found themselves, before I met my first wife or Maria.

It seemed several lifetimes ago. I’m not sure I have ever mentioned her to anyone but Maria, and I have not ever written about her, I still can’t, after all these years, I don’t know what to say. I was engaged to marry Rachel, I met her in New York City, when I was living in Greenwich Village and writing about the street revolutions raging around the city.

She has green eyes, long brown hair down to her shoulders, she loved fishing.

She was also a writer, an aspiring journalist, I was very much in love with her. We were going to get married in Vermont, where she grew up, we had a date all set. Rachel had a terrible headache one day in Washington Square Park, and we went to the hospital, and the doctors found a large and rapidly growing brain tumor, and she died a month or so later at her home north of Brattleboro.

There is something about a fresh and unrequited love like that this not like any other love. We never had a chance to get on each other’s nerves, or to discover the things we didn’t like about each other, as happens even to the happiest of couples. All we had was love, and then loss.  I was shattered when she died, I went off to Martha’s Vineyard to write and heal for several months, I worked in the few restaurants open then in the winter.

I think of Rachel once in a while, not too often, it still hurts, and  I still feel that pure and wonderful love, the two of us starting out together in New York, walking the streets and drinking coffee in those magical cafes until dawn. We were so excited about our love and our lives.

Rachel didn’t approach me out in the woods, I’m not sure either of us wanted to handle talking directly to one another, I said goodbye to her in a hospital in Rutland, and so much time has passed since we knew each other. She felt the same way, she was very sensitive and thoughtful. She was very beautiful, I forgot that she never got to be older than 19, I wondered if she would flinch at the site of this old man who is me now.

It had to be a shock to her, but then, I don’t know how the dead feel, no one seemed shocked by me.

Rachel blew me a kiss from behind an old tree trunk, as if she knew she could no longer enter my life, and I blew her a kiss back and waved to her.

We didn’t really need to say anything, and now,  those are the dead from my past who came through the veil to show themselves to me or talk to me. I wonder if any of them knew me now, really recognized me or if the person I was is lost to them. I don’t really know how they see me after all this time. They brought up a lot of emotion in me, they all brought me back in time, stirring up the pot a good bit.

But I am back in my life now, taking the dogs out to move the sheep, getting hay out of the animals, writing this piece, hoping to take a walk with Maria. The finger writes, as the poet says, and have writ, moves on, nor all my piety and wit can change a word of it.

And I would never want to try.