FATHER, DAUGHTER, HOLY GHOST

We lay in the room at the High Noon in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It’s one of the last nights I’ll ever see him. We are tired and warm from a day in the sun, playing on the beach and taking silly pictures with an underwater camera in the hotel pool. There’s a talking parrot in the lobby that we can’t get enough of and our laughs tango in the same cadence. We eat ice cream as rain falls outside and we count the beats between the lightning and thunder to measure its distance from us. With him, everything is musical.

I feel strange in this intimate moment with Father. It’s not unsafe, just unfamiliar. Vulnerable. Something inside of me desires more of these moments with him, but my hesitation reminds me that I keep a distance because I know he will be gone soon. Getting attached or expecting too much will just cause more pain. I’m eight years old.

“Do you want to know what I do every night before I go to bed?” Father says.

“What?” I take the last bites of my ice cream, which he lets me eat in the bed. I’m not sure what he’s going to say next.

“I talk to God.”

“You talk to God?”

“Yes. Every night.”

“Does he talk back?”

“He, she, it, they.” He twists a popsicle stick between his fingers. “But yes, I do hear back.”

“Really?” I’m skeptical, an early nonbeliever. As much as Mother has tried to convince me God exists, I’ve never found comfort in praying or faith. I just did it out of duty, hoping good things would happen to me if I did.

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.” He rolls over to look at me. “Whenever I’m feeling lonely, or lost, or left behind, I talk to the spirits beyond and ask for guidance and reassurance from those who have gone onto the Other Place.”

“The Other Place?”

“Mhm. Maybe I sound crazy, but I don’t think this is the only world there is. I don’t think we are the only people or beings that have tried to figure out what’s going on in this universe. And I don’t think our life or death is all there is. I think our soul is like energy, it can’t be created or destroyed, it just exists. So, all the spirits of our ancestors and loved ones who have gone to the Other Place stay there to help guide us and maybe even come back as life on again in another way.”

I smile at him. I’m not sure what to say back. I don’t really believe in that stuff anyway.

I lay back and listen to the rain and wonder if I will ever hear from God.

*

I didn’t grow up hating Father. I didn’t question why he didn’t live with us or why I only saw him a few times a year. I loved him, but that love was embedded with a deep distance. Our relationship was marked by longing. He has always been floating somewhere between my world and his own.

Father was born in Iran and often told me the story of running across the desert in the middle of the night when he was seven years old. He and his parents fled their home with only the possessions they could carry during one of their country’s upheavals. He always finished the story with how grateful he was for the life they built here after their safety was stolen. He was proud to be in America and even prouder to become an official citizen.

I have a hard time remembering our handful of interactions. From what I do recall, we smiled and laughed a lot. There are concrete pieces in photographs and home movies, but my experience of him is abstract and limited. I scan the memories over and over, hoping maybe one day something new will appear. When I try to remember the past, the moments are fragmented and hazy. I don’t always know what is real or made up, precise or exaggerated, embellished or absent.

Unfortunately, the most vivid memory I’m left with is watching Mother fall to her knees and wail in agony over his death.

*

Mother knocks on the door, sticking her head into my bedroom.

“Hey honey, do you want to call your dad?”

I’m nine years old, almost ten, lying on my stomach watching a cartoon, chin perched in the palms of my hands.

“Sure…” I swing my legs back and forth, feeling the sweat run between my calves. I sit under a fan on high speed, but I’m still dripping, typical for summer in the southern swamp.

“All right, I’m gonna call him now.” Mom usually talks to him for at least an hour before she hands it over to me, the phone always warm from her cheek.

Only a few minutes pass and I hear Mother rush out the front door.

I turn off the television and crawl over to my window that looks out to our driveway.

Mother clutches the phone with both hands. I can’t see her face. The sounds are muffled.

I watch her, peeking through the blinds. There’s a burning in my chest.

Something is wrong.

Mother lets out a sound I’ve never heard before. She collapses, curling inward as if she were gut-punched, hands and knees pressing into the hot pavement, hyperventilating between sobs. Our neighbors approach and try to comfort her.

The world moves slowly in this moment. Cold sweat trickles down my spine.I feel as if I’ve plunged underwater—the sounds drown out as I float down deeper and deeper, further and further away from the present. The sky darkens; an afternoon storm rolling in.

Mother finally turns and catches my gaze. I try to imagine what she sees of me as I carefully observe her in return: face red and puffy from crying, the phone still clutched to her ear with white knuckles. I turn away and press my back against the wall, the thunder rumbling as the world readies to shatter around me.

I go to my bed because I know she is coming. After what feels like an eternity, I hear the door open even though my back is turned. A gurgle of Mother’s voice comes out, heavy and wet like she sucked in the humid air of the midday storm. I face her despite the obvious tension. I don’t speak, staring at her with a brave blank face.

Somehow, I already know what she’s going to say.

“Your father…” She struggles to continue. Each word is tight.

 “He’s gone. He’s dead.”

“Huh?”

“He’s dead,” she repeats. “Oh god honey, I’m so, so sorry.” She starts sobbing again, choking on the truth of the words aloud.

I only remember this moment viscerally. The stream of endless saltwater pouring from my eyes, the rawness of my throat from wailing, the gasping for air in my lungs from drowning in pain, and a burning brand of death seared into my breastbone that’s never fully healed.

I fall asleep, exhausted from emotional overwhelm. When I emerge, everyone wants to comfort me, but I don’t want any.

I hate nothing more than for people to feel sorry for me. I’d rather be alone and let the pain eat me alive.

I go into the backyard and sit on the swings. I push myself back and forth, looking out into the preserve behind our house—a sliver of old, natural Florida. Wildlife chitters between overgrown brush and long grey beards of Spanish moss drape from the trees. I squeeze the rubber swing ropes and look up at the sky.

This is when I feel the wind. Not the air that breezes by any old day. A chilled wind—an arctic freeze blasting unexpectedly in the southern summer, raising goosebumps on my neck and ripping into the rest of my flesh.

I don’t know it yet, but this is the first time I feel the ghost of my Father.

*

I didn’t attend the funeral. I was told Father had to be buried quickly for religious reasons, but I think it had more to do with the way he died. He’d been in the ground for weeks before we knew he was gone, and I will always be injured by the lack of closure. I have left only a few of his belongings—pieces of Persian gold jewelry, cards and letters in his handwriting, a couple dozen photographs, t-shirts that still keep his smell after decades, and some remnants from his funeral.

Mother and I didn’t talk much about his passing. I think it was too painful. She told me his death was an accident—he was cleaning a gun from his collection one day and it went off. I would have accepted that story for the rest of my life and I can’t decide if it’s better or not that I learned the truth. She bought me a journal and some children’s books about grief and death. Then Mother dropped me off at a therapist. I didn’t want to talk to a stranger and it seemed like it was too much to talk about with anyone else for that matter. We still struggle in those conversations.

So, I pretended like I was fine. I forced myself to move on and drowned myself in daydreams and fiction and substances to escape. I certainly stopped believing in God.

As far as I was concerned, God could go fuck Himself.

*

On a summer day before 9^th grade, Mother and I go to lunch at Chili’s. She seems apprehensive and I dread some kind of “big talk” approaching. We sit down and her voice shakes.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for years. I’ve been carrying this heavy burden with me. I think it’s time you kno—”

 “Hi, welcome to Chili’s! Can I get you ladies started with something today? Drinks? Chips and salsa?” The waiter realizes too late he’s intruded at the wrong time.

I know what I’m ordering without looking at the menu. “Diet Coke and a house salad.” I avoid eye contact. “Dressing on the side.”

 Mother orders but I don’t hear what she says, anxiety pounding in my ears.

The waiter leaves and she doesn’t hesitate to pick up where she left off:

“Anyway, like I was saying…This is something I’ve been wanting to tell you, and I think you’re old enough to have this conversation now.”

 I stare at her with my mastered brave blank face. “Okay…Am I in trouble?”

“Oh no, honey!” Shaking her head, she whispers, “I’m afraid you’re going to be hurt.”

“Hurt by wha—”

Two glasses clink down, condensation drips onto the table.

“Diet Coke and Unsweetened Iced Tea.” Still misreading the situation, the waiter lingers through the silence. “Straws?” We nod politely as he fumbles with his apron and awkwardly departs.

Mother broaches the topic again, wasting no time in getting to the point now.

“It’s about your dad,” she confesses, “and what happened to him.”

I hide my discomfort. She knows I don’t like talking about Father.

Her inhale is dramatic; the words spill out quick and messy: “I know I told you all those years ago that it was an accident. That he died while cleaning one of his guns…”

I keep staring, waiting for the blow to land.

“Honey,” she exhales through a flood of tears. “I’m so sorry. You were so young, and I didn’t know how to tell you then or explain what it meant or how it happened. I just couldn’t. You were only nine!”

She pauses, collects herself again, and says:

“Your father killed himself.”

My world, already shattered and unsteadily rebuilt, shatters again.

I hear the deafening sizzle of fajitas. The waiter parades the cast iron through the restaurant, steam trail billowing behind. Thunder rumbles outside. Mother and I stare at each other, a veil of smoke and silence between us. Rain falls.

 I finally speak. “How did it really happen?”

She looks at me with that dreadful pity. “Well, what I told you isn’t that far from the truth. It was a gun…but he wasn’t cleaning it. And it wasn’t an accident. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t think he was suicidal…I had just talked to him before it happened, and everything seemed fine. If I had known, I’d have…”

 “Would have what?!” She’s right, I am hurt despite my effort to be aloof.

 We sit in silence, unable to communicate in any meaningful way. We’re two opposing tides of emotion: she, swelling and overloaded, spilling smothering waves. And me, a still, undisturbed pool, earthquake brewing just beneath the surface, destructive molten core ready to explode and destroy.

The unhealed wound in my chest rips open again, the bleeding edges searing.

*

I think about his last days often. He had plane tickets to come see us for Father’s Day, but we didn’t find out what happened until Fourth of July. Every year during those two weeks I am plunged back into the oceanic void of the pain I fail to find words to describe accurately.

For years after Father’s tragedy, I tried to line up pieces to put part of the picture together. I only have fractured details leading up to his suicide, but I do know that everyone saw something wrong in hindsight, not when he needed help the most. I know that’s the same story of countless others. I know he carried deep pain from his own childhood. I know 9/11 brought out rampant Islamophobia across America, something I experienced too, even as a child. I know he was traumatized witnessing the towers fall and then blamed for their destruction. I know Father probably feared existing in a world that had shunned his culture, his religion, and his entire being. Mother says his moods were unpredictable. But he obviously hid the worst of it from everyone until it was too late; such destructive qualities I was destined to inherit.

He died in June 2002, two months after his 30^th birthday.

A life barely started.

When the trauma of Father’s death was reopened, I had no idea suicide would plague my own existence. At one point, I welcomed the fateful curse. Self-elimination remained the reliable backup plan to escape the succession of traumas I experienced as a teenager. I had a few unsuccessful attempts, but each time, some force refused to let me cross the threshold of death. The dozens of scars remaining on my body mark a visible testament to darkness that almost consumed me too.

What I wish I knew most were Father’s thoughts during those last hours. I wonder if it was anything like what I’ve experienced over and over. Did he stay up through endless hours of the night, even during the brightest days peeking over his shoulder for the shadows? Was he trapped in a mind of unceasing commentary, a self-sabotaging interior monologue eating his brain alive? Would he hurt himself in other ways, attempting to ease the internal strife with a controlled, exterior pain? How many times did he imagine it before actually pulling the trigger? Was the final pain the best relief? Did he still believe in God?

I will never have the answers. And I will never be rid of his haunting.

*

Mother tells me she’s going downtown to a show that afternoon with a friend.

When we see each other later, she tells me the show was with a medium. She often involves herself in these spiritual experiences, searching for signs from the other side. Mother has always had unwavering faith.

She tells me how Father was one of the first to show up. The medium described a young man who passed too soon. His death was shocking, completely unexpected. Fourth of July weekend.

“I knew it was your dad as soon as the medium said Fourth of July…” Mother says, “But the other details just confirmed it. I raised my hand, and the medium came over and said he had a message for a little girl. I told him it was you, his daughter, but that you were grown up now.”

Tears fill her eyes. “Your father showed the medium books. Stacks and stacks of books and pages and pages of typed text. He asked me if you were a writer.”

I stare at her, brave blank face, trying to control my emotions. We both know I’ve been writing about my life for years, but it’s been painful to complete and even more difficult to share. And at this age, in my 20s, any conversation about Father makes me uncomfortable. I’ve conditioned myself into stoic silence.

Mother continues: “Your dad wanted to tell you that you must do it, that he’s with you while you write it. He has his hand in helping you succeed. His words were: She needs to write the book.”

Thunder rumbles outside. Saltwater rains warm on my cheeks even though I don’t want to cry.

Again, I feel the chilly breeze, goosebumps rising on my neck and rippling into the rest of my flesh. I’ve felt it so many times before but it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

Father’s ghost, Father’s spirit.

*

I had long abandoned my spiritual connections after Father died. I stopped believing in anything at all. Life had only become a series of difficult experiences and I found no meaning in any of it except that I could write stories–whatever good that was worth when I had no courage to publish anything. I questioned the message the medium Mother saw, wondering if he was a con preying on others’ losses, giving them false hope about consciousness beyond physical death using stolen details from Google or social media.

That changed a bit when I saw the psychic man in Cassadaga.

Cassadaga is The Psychic Capital of the World, located on liminal Floridian land, some special gap in the veil. Mother, Mimi, I and some friends took a day trip there to see this psychic man for readings.

He was pretty normal; not so much a psychic as someone who seemed in tune with that Other Place. If there’s one thing I did continue to believe in, it was realms beyond our own physical dimension, separated by an invisible curtain only some look behind. I’d peeked behind it a few times myself.

I sit down for my session. I shuffle the tarot cards and the psychic man lays a spread of them in front of us.

“The universe, the spirit world, whatever you want to call it, is holding out a of communication cup to you. You have the gift, but why are you hiding from it?” He’s direct, certain in his assumption.

I stare at the psychic man, unsure what to say. “I don’t know…Maybe fear. I don’t have a good answer.”

“You’ve had many tower moments in your life.” He points to a card with thunder striking a tower, two people falling from the top. “But you need to let go of this baggage and open yourself to the knowledge and support your spirits want to offer you.”

He moves to the next card. A hand emerges from the clouds, holding a large golden cup overflowing out the sides.

“You see, when the spirits around us speak, we must be open and willing to take their guidance. Otherwise, we are lost. Especially for people like us, who are, for better or worse, connected to the Other Side.”

The Other Side.

He then asks if there is anyone “from beyond” whom I want to reach. I know who, but don’t say anything. I tell him sure, to see if anything comes up. Immediately, the psychic man describes Father:

“A young man is here. He’s outgoing and zany, and understands the immense joys and pains of the world. He was gone too soon, guilt surrounds him…Something bad happened…How bad? It’s almost unspeakable. Who is this man?”

“My father.”

“And he was killed or killed hims—” He stops himself.

I stare. Brave blank face.

The psychic man doesn’t look at me with pity, but empathy. “One of the most difficult karmas is dying by one’s own hand. But he’s sorry…He’s so sorry. And he wants you to know his death was out of everyone’s control. But he says you know better than anyone.”

In a moment of unexpected vulnerability, I lay my arm on the table and lift my sleeve to reveal the deep, horizontal scar on my left wrist.

The psychic man smiles. “He has a lot he wants to tell you, but there few important things are coming through.” He closes his eyes, listening to the whispers of Father’s holy ghost.

“He has a dog with him. He wants you to know the dogs go there too. I’m also seeing piles of books and thousands of pages with markings in red ink. Do you write? I’m getting the message over and over that you need to write. His presence is there, and he will help guide you because you can heal through your words, even if you don’t believe it yet.”

In my predictable defense, I stare ahead, pretending nothing can hurt me. But inside, I am finally breaking.

“And one other thing…” The psychic man treads carefully again. “He knows how you feel about having children—it’s a sensitive subject. But he wants to say this…”

I hold my lungs tight, afraid to breathe and lose control.

“He’s been waiting on the other side. He wants to come back through you.  He doesn’t want you to feel pressured, but if you want, he’ll continue to wait for you to bring him back.”

I don’t feel the tears start to fall; they just pour.

The rain follows, pattering on the tin roof of the psychic man’s home.

*

As I finally enter my third decade and grow older than Father will ever be, I think about my constant dance with death. I didn’t plan to make it this long. The inevitable keeps getting pushed further back. Life has become extra space, borrowed time that I don’t know how to fill because I never bothered to make long-term plans. I will always question if it is worth continuing. Cowardice is the only thing stopping me from finding out otherwise.

I’d never told anyone about how my various deaths and rebirths brought me to reconsider my values and priorities, to wonder what life could look like building a safe and stable family of my own, to wonder what life could look healing instead of suffering. I try for once not to be skeptical about the psychic man’s message.

I don’t want to just endure life if I am going to continue surviving it. I want to find a way to be grateful for it all despite the suffering. So, I once again rebirth into a new phase of my life. I no longer hide from my pain. I embrace it, even when it feels messy and uncomfortable. I write the words locked up in my mind, even when it feels impossible to let them free. I cry when I need to, even when I’m tempted to put up the brave blank face. I feel Father with me in the burning sunsets and in the chills rising in my body when I sing loud to the wind and in the distance where the sky and the ocean horizon merge into one.

I start to think about my faith again. I’m believing less in The-Man-In-The-Sky-Above and believing more in the God-Within-Me. The God-Within-Me has been placed in deep darkness and still learned to grow towards the light. What I need to believe in is myself.

For the first time in years, I look at myself in the mirror without fear. I see the pain and happiness and experience and vulnerability that are all alive in my face. I see strength in the self-made scars. I see Father’s eyes reflect back and I know he is within me no matter what. And I let myself wonder if maybe one day he will come back.

Every time I choose to soften instead of harden, I find myself closer to joy.

I lay in bed. I listen to the rain.

I talk to God.