Spirits

When my mother passed I remember sitting in the apartment in a hard wooden chair facing my Uncle drinking wine just talking. Talking about everything and nothing, like it was the best party ever. At one point I remember him saying, "Wow you are young and your whole life is ahead of you, look at me, I'm getting old, my sister just died..."
I think I didn't really get what he was talking about but the words come to mind as more and more of the people who were from certain times and eras in my life, and of course the life of a City or a generation die, whether it is relatives or friends. Even though they are still older and from a broader perspective or a scientific perspective it was time...  my views on death seem to change. I used to be real practical.  But now...it's weird, my most recent friend who was much older than me and had been dealing with health problems for a long time.... I debate whether I wish I had heard of his passing at all. Granted I would have still been sending texts to his phone... but so what? The last text i sent was the picture of a Rainbow, and I could only think the picture really did look like the Bifrost. Since we had talked of magic and Odin and Merlin and Arthur and all sorts of things like that often. I thought he would have liked it. I sent a picture of my children in front of the flowers at our house as well. They stopped fighting briefly to smile.

When my Aunt died, she had had the chance to come up and visit us either a few months before. The thing is when Tony died, we had talked often about how he would like this house where I now live and he ahd wanted to visit the Pyramids, any Pyramids, either Egyptian of Central American, or Devil's Tower.. or another place of spiritual power before he died, and I think he had reconciled that he was not going to do this before he died after all, and that that was ok.

Still I wish he had the chance to come up and see the deer on our Mountain and do some Kung Fu or something. But of course he had lived an adventurous life and done many things that people do not have a chance or have the guts to do.

I had dreams, not about him, but of American Kung Fu people... who have a certain look, after I heard of his passing and I think it was my subconscious missing the era that Tony represented both of my life and also of Boston and Roxbury and Chinatown.


We went to Brooklyn to buy the paper money and I guess host a small little feast in his honor... which just means I ate Fau Yuk with my bare hands in the kitchen. I debated whether I should tell the children about his passing or whether I should simply move directly into the Santa Claus like interaction I planned to have with his spirit, where food would be left out for him every year. I guess we will do both. I told Noah Tony died right there in the Supermarket.

"The repair guy?" he said shocked.
"Yes."

"Ok." but it was a sad ok. Like... we kind of thought maybe Tony would live forever like Merlin or just fade away like a Jedi. Of course Merlin was killed by Nimue and Obi Wan by Darth Vader... But some how I almost wish I had less evidence and I planned on putting Tony over there with Elvis, Bruce Lee, and Tupac, our personal immortal who wanders the earth and may ring the doorbell every once in a while, maybe like the Time Traveller....

It is almost like I am now vowing to be impractical and bring a fantasy world to life where such things are possible but where the people, instead of being historical people I don't know... are real people that WE knew.