The Great Herenow

Being At Peace Is Forever In The Now

Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash

This is a piece for the STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration of artists, for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC), around a set theme. The latest theme is “DEATH”.

This is not a meditation, a scary story, a horror story, a story with a wry ironic end. I’m writing about right “now” to you, right now.

This is what I know, so far: We are born, we live, we turn lives into memories, we remember, we die, we are remembered. Maybe.

I almost didn’t write this one. It feels like the stirring of the sediment of clear flowing waters, but maybe it’s the turning over of ashes of a campfire which kept me warm overnight and kept the wolves away. Maybe it’s me sweeping a space to start over.

You see, something happened, this past morning, I dreamed about my father.

Some of you know my story, so no need to get into it (all in the archive if you look).

For those who don’t know about me, Dad’s passing is why you’re read anything of mine over the last couple of years or even just “found” me or signed up for fiction and/or tech and “the future”. It’s why I’m writing “Book #3”, even as I edit #1 and #2.

This is what I remember about the dream:

It was evening, and it was winter because there was snow but I didn’t feel cold. The small front walk of the modest home he bought years ago was cleared of snow by shovel or broom, I don’t know. I was walking to the front walk, coming “home” from “somewhere”.

I say it was evening because all the light was coming from the light triggered by a motion detector, with its tiny click which I did not hear but assumed had clicked and painted a yellowish-like, comforting glow, a fat slice cut from a pie made of light, with the arc of the fat end landing past the fence, fading into a dark sidewalk.

And there Dad was, in a medium blue down jacket. He left something on the walk, covered in a light coating of snow, and a plastic shopping bag with fleece gloves. Then he walked away, on his two legs, a thing I had not seen him able to do with ease since 18 months before his passing, or 4 and 1/2 years ago. He was, in a word, being “Dad”.

He was getting things done for me, as Dads do, so that I would be “okay”. I woke up. And unlike most dreams, I remembered so much of it. It was the first time in years he came to me in a dream, as he “was”. The handful of dreams I had after he passed away were him in that bed we “rented” in that final year. This dream was him being him.

This was yesterday morning.

On “Tax day” a couple of weeks ago, we visited his resting place.

We cleaned around the stone, swept away the loose dirt, and wiped the stone clean. Mom brought a jar of water, and flowers. The groundskeepers would take it away but that happens later when people aren’t around. They already switched on the “babbling brook” of an ornate fountain designed to look “natural”, as if a natural spring was just flowing. There was no sun but it was calm.

By the time we got home, some notices came in the mail. Taxes filed. Done. The last of the biggest bits of Dad’s affairs, not covered under things like joint accounts and so on, was put to rest. The sun came out not long before we got back. It was warm again.

I sat on the steps of a deck and ramp in the back of the house that I had built for Dad, when we were caring for him during that long quiet mad year when everyone else was also shut in, for other reasons. Dad never got to use that deck. We never had to rush him out of the house on a transport chair. I use it to sit and read and pace back and forth under the light of a low hanging sun. Sometimes, I sit cross legged on the deck and write (or rewrite).

I sat there and read. So much had been put to rest, I needed some too.

It was then, that Mom said she was ready to see family, her brother and surviving sisters. Plans to travel had been put off, well, because of “everything” for years. Some of the same “everythings” some of you know about. And if you don’t or haven’t yet, well, life has a way of sending some of those “everythings” come your way, it’s okay.

Mom lost one sister last year and a sister-in-law, and she almost didn’t travel because of a medical diagnosis which my brother received, almost by accident, while treating something else (which went away). Something to think about. What if that “something else” had not happened, would we ever have found out about the “real something”?

My brother said it best, “You don’t know. so do it now.” He was right. He is right.

The only thing I know is now.

What is now?

Mom has been with her brother and sisters for a week, which is great. A cousin emailed me pics, and another cousin texted me some too. My brother, through the administrative vagaries of the medical system, got his “scan”, so we’ll see.

Me? I’m editing “book #1”. I spoke to a handful of brilliant friends who want to help me get my words cleaned up, and released in the wild. Soon, I’ll get into deep editing of “book #2”, while sharing new draft chapters of “book #3” here with you from time to time (so that “Notes” feature will come in handy, the chapters might be damn long).

The sun is shining. The insurance for the house with its small front walk has just been paid for, my brother is so far okay, and I am writing to you because everything is good.

All I want to do is do my best to write, and give you my best.

I will write a draft chapter for one of my books and a short story today, and see if I can send those to you today (we’ll see).

That’s what I want to do, right now, think about you now.

I am at peace in the Herenow, that’s more than enough, us forever in the now.

It’s nice weather here, and I hope it’s nice by you, all sunlight with a sky that’s clear.

Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash