It's All In the Playing (17 page)

And now it was nearing Thanksgiving. My mother
had called to tell me that Dad was ill and failing fast. She hadn’t wanted to disturb my work, but her voice cracked and she wept as she suggested perhaps I should see him soon. She wanted my daughter Sachi to be there too.

Of course we would go. We finished shooting in Stockholm just before Thanksgiving. I was free until the Hawaii location the following week. It was as though the timing was guided and the impending “reality” of old age was becoming more and more interlaced in my life. It was a constant now, imposing itself with every late-night phone call.

I called Sachi. She had her own drama going. She was stunned and heartbroken over the death of her acting teacher. The teacher had apparently fallen asleep at the wheel of her car, veered into oncoming traffic, and had a head-on collision that exploded the car. She was burned beyond recognition. It was so violent an end, so abrupt, and yet, as with all events in life, so self-motivated.

Sachi and I had a long talk relating to why anyone would choose a death like that. No one else was killed—only slightly injured. We speculated on what karmic relationship she could have had with the driver of the oncoming car. Both of us believed there was no such thing as “accident,” but a heartbreaking personal loss like this called for serious questioning, in order, perhaps, to help bear the burden. We talked of so many seemingly dramatic deaths occurring during these times. Was it our imagination? No, not really, and we could sense that many people we knew might elect to check out in the next few years. Almost as though, with the onslaught of New Age energy and the enormous pressures the modern world exerted, they would not be able to participate in the acceleration fast enough to be a part of the transition and would use karmic workouts to leave the body.

“Is the world going insane, Mom?” she asked, as she elaborated on the violence in the news.

We talked on for what became several hours, agreeing
that something big was occurring in the world, something different from before, when international world wars, plagues, famines had hit us. It felt almost as though a giant
cleanup,
a cleansing, was in process on the planet. As though the energy of old karmic patterns was being cleared. The acceleration was on, and each event had a reason for being. It was all a learning process, too, perhaps to help our limited thinking to expand, our perceptions of ourselves to be more generous, and the conception of our future to become a certainty of peace.

Those who insisted on remaining stuck in the old ideas of judgment, blame, fear, rancor, rage, and revenge were operating not only with a limited perspective of themselves and others, but with the prospect that they would be caught in an amplification of that destructive energy that would manifest
their
negative reality to be exactly as they feared it would be.

So those who cynically assessed spiritual viewpoints as being “wishful thinking” and “desired projecting” were absolutely right. We’d all get what we believed we would. What we expected would come to pass. And with the acceleration of New Age energy, projections of
negativity
would occur and manifest faster than ever before, just as projection of positivity would.

   I arrived home to see my mom and dad the day before Thanksgiving.

Dad was drawn and white as he lay fully dressed on top of his bed. I walked into his room and watched him sleep. I bent over and kissed him. He woke up, startled. Then he smiled. He hadn’t known I was coming.

“Oh, Monkey,” he said, barely able to speak above a whisper. “When they took me to the hospital with the drop in my blood count I shut my eyes for a minute and this tremendous sense of peace came over me like a big umbrella.”

I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

“Yep,” he went on slowly. “I knew everything would be all right. I said to myself: There are some of Shirley’s people taking care of me up there so I know I’ll be fine.’ Then I let these damn doctors make all those holes in my arms and take these stupid pictures of my insides.”

I sat down beside him and lifted his white withered arm. It was hard for him to breathe. He pushed one of his hands into his chest. I looked at the long fingers and remembered how he had delicately fingered his violin strings when he was a younger man, teaching me what made the notes change and the music play.

“Remember that fluffy strapless dress you bought for the prom or the beauty show or something?” he asked.

I nodded and quietly sniffed back tears.

I remembered very well. It was a yellow organza with a white strapless ruffle around the bust.

“I was so proud of you I was about to bust when I saw you in that dress, and your mother didn’t even think I’d let you have it.”

As I watched and listened to him I understood that the reversal process was happening. He was becoming my child now, dependent, helpless, and longing for care and love. He had protected and provided for me when I was dependent and helpless and now the roles were reversed.

Sachi had told me of her last visit with him. He had told her that one day I would be dependent on her. That this was the course and cycle of life. It afforded each member of the family the experience of caring and being cared for.

“So many parents have children who don’t bother with them anymore,” he said to me. “But I’m the richest father in the world to have children like you who care so much.”

He drifted back to sleep. I sat there and watched him breathe. How would I know if he decided to leave?
Was there a telltale sign? Was there any way to prepare? Would he choose a moment that was right for him, just as he must have chosen his moment of birth for the same reason? And more important than anything, was what I called
death
actually viewed from the other side as birth? Was the experience of living within the human body considered an entrapment of the soul, whose natural habitat was the spiritual dimension?

I watched Dad for a long time. Sachi had already seen him and was in the living room with Mother—continuity in motion.

Then Dad opened his eyes again.

“I told Sachi,” he said, “not to be a sucker about men, like you were. Not to let men praise her and turn her head. We had a nice talk. Your mother says Sachi only has two things to worry about.”

“What are they, Daddy?” I asked.

“Walking like a Japanese and letting her hips get too big.”

I laughed out loud. Whatever the extremity, my father’s sense of humor would never desert him.

“But,” he continued, “I say she has to worry about men. They will con her because she’s a cute little thing and she’ll feel sorry for them just like you did. For God’s sake tell her not to run an open charity for people the way you do.”

I was holding his thin hand between mine. I patted it gently.

“Yes, Daddy, I’ll tell her that. Why don’t you get some rest now.”

He took out his hearing aids from his ears.

“These damn things are one thousand dollars apiece or some damned thing. The price of hearing nonsense is high. But that’s the most terrible part of getting old, you know.”

“What is, Daddy?” I asked.

“Being a nuisance to people.”

He looked at me for a long wistful time.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said finally.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Have you decided to go before Mother?”

He continued to look at me intently without blinking.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t made my decision yet. But I can see your mother is getting stronger and I’m getting weaker. She has so much she wants to do.”

“Is there more you want to do, Daddy?”

He looked around the room as though searching for an image of something.

“Well,” he said finally, “I’d like to live to see your book show on the TV and to see Warren’s new picture. So I might stay alive till then.”

He took a deep breath.

“I remember,” he continued, “I could never stand to look at the sight of blood, and now with all my transfusions I realize it’s everything. I’m going to try and get stronger. But I saw you and Sachi and I’m sure I’ll see Warren at Christmastime when he’s back from his location.”

“So,” I said, “we have an agreement that you’ll stick around until next spring at least?”

“Yes,” he said. “I can promise you that.”

“I love you, Daddy,” I said.

“I love you too, darlin’,” he replied. “More than I can ever tell you.”

He reached up for me. I hugged him without squeezing too hard. Then he leaned back again.

“Well, I have to close my eyes now,” he said. “Thank you for listening to me talk. Thank you for talking to me. Now go tell the boss I’m on top of the bed still dressed, so she’ll come in and kiss me goodnight.”

I nodded, kissed his forehead, and left the room.

Sachi and Mother were in animated conversation when I walked in. They had both been through their
own private reflections on his condition, and life was going on.

“Mom?” said Sachi with that question mark in her voice. “Do you know what Granddaddy told me before you came?”

I sat down to a cup of tea.

“No, sweetheart. What?”

“Well, you know that old-maid woman named Helen who was by here last year?”

“Yes.”

“Granddaddy says she is suffering from some terrible old-maid’s Hawaiian disease.”

“Oh, really? What?”

“Something called lackanookie,” she said perfectly straight and with no recognizable humor.

“Isn’t your father terrible?” said Mother. “How can I explain that to Sachi?”

“You don’t,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

Sachi punched Mother’s knee.

“I sort of knew what he meant, Grandmother. How can he be so funny when he’s feeling so bad?”

“He’s never feeling too bad for that kind of ‘bawdry’ humor,” said Mother in mock disgust. Suddenly she got up and went to her old highboy desk.

“Look, Shirl,” she said in girlish delight. “This might be a good thing—I don’t know.” She handed me a contract coupon from Reader’s Digest. “I’ve been paying into this thing, so much a month for years so I could get the giant payoff—look how much.”

I looked. It was for $5,100,000.

“Yeah. Your father thinks I’m crazy, and I haven’t told anyone else,
but I could win it, you know.”

I looked at Sachi. She looked at Mother.

“Yes, Grandmother,” she said, all full of wonder. “You could win it, especially if you believe you can.”

“Then,” said Mother, “I’d give half of it to you and Sachi in case you have financial troubles. Then I’d march
right down to the girls at the bank, and tell them to save it for me until I got old.”

I felt my eyes pop. I couldn’t resist saying, “And when do you think that will be?”

Mother laughed loudly.

“Me?” she giggled. “I’m going to live to be ninety-two. I’ve already decided. Life is so funny, isn’t it? That I’d win this money after all these years. I’ve enjoyed reading those little Reader’s Digest books because I don’t want to read a whole book. So I’ve gotten a whole lot of enjoyment out of the money I’ve been paying in.”

Sachi got up to get some more tea. There were aspects to positive thinking that even we hadn’t thought about.

Mother looked over at me lovingly.

“Daddy says he’s still on top of the bed dressed, so I’ll come in and kiss him goodnight, right?” she asked.

“Right.”

She shrugged and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.

“How would you feel,” I said, “if he went first?”

She folded her arms.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t like to think about how I’d feel.” Her eyes filled with pain for a moment and then as though she could orchestrate her emotions she said, “I know one thing, though. I’d be left with trying to figure out how to work all the machines in this house, because your father never taught me a thing. He wanted to be the big shot, so he never showed me how to work anything, Shirl.”

I always marveled at her disciplined practicality. Then she thought a moment.

“Evie says that when Glenn died, knowing she was in a silent house was the hardest part. But I’d miss talking about what we saw on television or what we were eating for dinner.” She faltered a moment. Then she continued: “I’ll miss that wonderful mind the most. That
mind of his that never stops questioning and putting together connections. That brilliant, brilliant mind.” Her voice trailed off.

I kept very quiet.

Then she started up again, her tone vigorous. “But I’d come to see you kids more often.” She looked at me shyly. “That is, if you’d want a crotchety old woman around.”

Sachi walked in from the kitchen. “Listen, Grandmother,” she said. “You
have
to come and see me. I want to move away from Mother”—she gestured toward me—“so I can become more independent. So you come and we’ll have a good time on our own.”

Mother winked at me. She got up, gave Sachi a tweak on the cheek, and went in to say goodnight to the man she had loved and lived with for fifty-five years.

I knew both of them would be around for a while longer anyway.

During the next few days with Mom and Dad, I thought a lot about what Ambres had said regarding the trauma of my past lives with them. In a more total way I began to accept the reality that my parents—and my daughter, for that matter—were beings of extensive life experiences, just as I was.

As I sat talking with them, joking and sharing, I allowed the images of those past-life experiences to flow through my emotions while attempting to integrate my feelings for them today. Each of us had been abused by power and were abusers of power ourselves. Ambres was right. I had “seen” Mom and Dad in ways and days from the past. We had not always been parents and child. We had been involved in events that had been more than upsetting on the acupuncture table.

Now as I watched them closely over breakfast, two loving, spritely, compassionate human beings grappling with the ravages and inevitabilities of time, I was seeing them through ancient eyes in a long-forgotten time they
could only barely acknowledge sharing. I was reminded once again that I had chosen these two as parental figures this time around
because
they always moved me so deeply,
because
they were the source of much of my learning and knowing of myself.