Meet Up

I think of my brother Larry often. I imagine seeing him walking up to me while I am in the middle of the produce department where I work. He has been dead just over thirty years now but I still remember him like it was a few days ago. In seeing him I realize he is the one who will bring me over, crossing the bridge from life to what comes after. I have no way of knowing if this is true of course. I remember how he stands, the way he would look at me, how he would always call me Joel, distancing himself from our abusive father who had diminutive names for us all.

Sometimes I imagine him walking up to me, standing in front of me. Who is the first to speak? I don’t know. Sometimes I talk to him. I tell him I am sorry he had such a hard life, and that I hope God has made it all up to him, because he deserved far better than what he received. He doesn’t answer me though. I don’t really know what he would say. Not yet.

I talked to my sister this week. She died the same year my brother did, 1993. I tell her I am looking forward to seeing her again. Seeing her without her burden she carried in this life, seeing how beautiful she really is.

I talk to my mom often. I tell her I’m sorry I didn’t come up to see her before she died and I ask her forgiveness. I have deep guilt here. She doesn’t answer me either. So much of me springs from her, what she stood for, the life she lived, the example she set for me, the things that she taught me. Some days I imagine I feel her forgiveness.

I talk to my dad on occasion. There isn’t much to say to him though. Sometimes I forgive him. Sometimes that seems presumptuous because what makes me think he thinks he did anything wrong, and that if he does he is sorry? I still think of him though even so. I feel drawn to him and I don’t know why. Perhaps my heart still yearns for his love, his approval, his treating my like a son he was proud of. Things that never were. Even so I have imagined meeting him. He would come up to me and say something like, “Hello son, I have come to bring you home.” In all my life I have never heard him call me by my given name.

I feel them praying for me, even though they are all long dead now. Does God hear their prayers? I believe He does. I yearn to see them again. They are family and that means something to me even if it doesn’t to anyone else.

And Anna. Did she dance?