Spirits in New Orleans

Sometimes, for a split second I think something like: ‘I’ll ask Dad whatever happened with that affair Aunt Jessie had with Aunt Millie’s husband’. My reflex to pick up the phone and dial 205-342-5314 and get a refresher on family secrets ends as abruptly as if awaking from a dream. Realization hits hard but the sensation of sharing a moment with Dad lingers. Sometimes I simply entertain the fun of, the memory of, calling him to say, “Oklahoma is on AMC tonight. Go turn it on”.
Mom enters my thoughts in a less spontaneous manner. For instance, filling out medical history forms has me wishing I had been privy to her family history. She was adopted and back then there were no records and a degree of irrational shame often was passed unto the adopted child. We never spoke of it. Wish we had. Wish I had held her more during that last year; instead I seemed to just fuss at her for not eating or being able to walk. Sure would feel good to hold her now.
Memories, regrets and wishes attach themselves to my parents in different ways. Dad is remembered in dreams and thoughts much as he looked in his later years. And with his premature gray hair I never knew him to look any younger other than Jimmy Stewart circa Vertigo. But Mom is a different story, different dreams.
When Mom visits my dreams she is always younger. She is Mom the brunet, Mom the frosted blonde, she is Mom who is healthy. Mom fought two battles simultaneously: Parkinson’s and osteoporosis. She lost both. It doesn’t take shrink to tell me that it is so much more fun to dream of her as vital and cognicient. Yet in my waking hours every befuddled and stooped lady I meet brings me to tears. But hey, in dreams she never budges past middle age.
They died within two months of each other. The dreams were more frequent then. From the first time I dreamed of them I knew they would always be there for me. Kinda like old home movies. For me dreaming is a part of my life and in those moments they come alive and I have them back again. And only once in a while do we have fussing and fighting, but then that was and is a real family thing.
With Valentines Day looming over our city – a city still raw with regrets and losses, it seems like a good time shed some tears. The best tears are the ones that honor those loved ones lost not only to Katrina, loved ones like my parents. I can not always rely on pleasant dreams to keep my memories alive. Therefore when something triggers the ole tear ducks and I find myself weepin’ and a wailin’ for Mom and Dad I like to think they somehow know – know that I get it, that I appreciate the profundity of death the importance of life, their lives.
If my reserviour of tears were ever to dry up it would somehow mean that they had died again and were truly gone for good.
Dreams and tears are not for every occasion. I also like to talk to dead folks. Oh, I have no gift for the supernatural, wish I did. But I do like to believe that maybe they hear.
Once I got a little carried away chatting up Dad from the pier of the Grand Hotel at Point Clear, Alabama where his ashes were tossed some years earlier. My accompanying friend, Paul, had to remind me “Debbie, your father is dead, not deaf!” Mom had a similar moment as I visited her grave site and commenced to regale her with all the latest gossip only to find to the chagrin of some onlookers that I was sitting on the wrong tomb stone. There I was sitting on top of their great grandmother with a cold beer in hand telling Mom some off color joke. Ya can’t take me anywhere.
This is not just a Mom and Dad mish mush Hallmark moment. Since Katrina everyone here has been touched by death in some form. The beloved dog swept from loving arms during the flood; the husband who stayed behind making room for the elderly neighbor to evacuate with his family – he drowned in his Lazy Boy recliner; the suicide, heart attack, gun shot, dogs and cats left for ‘just gonna be gone three days’ victims.
We all know and know of too many. I have one that I talk to. There is a restaurant I pass on my walk home. It is closed, suspended in time, nothing has been touched since September 05. In those days after the storm the owner, who stayed to be with animals, died in there of a heart attack. It utterly breaks my heart. I feel certain he is there and no one seems to notice, know, or care. So I will care and I will give him the acknowledgment he deserves. I speak to him and tell him I am so very sorry. I try to keep him alive. No one should die twice. Ones memory should be honored.
So for Valentines Day I will pour a little of my drink to the ground one for the brothers. I will leave flowers on the door step of a certain restaurant. I talk very loud and very silly and happy to my Mom and Dad. And cry tears to honor all the loved ones taken by the storm, the war, and our government.