During my second marriage, I became quite fond of father-in-law Jack. He was a farmer all of this life, a kind man, hard working man, an honest man, and a gentle-man. I saw him suffer immensely with the death of his wife due to biliary cancer. I saw him, after her death, struggle to keep up with life, because she had been so much a part of him. He gave up much of what he had done all his life, when he was not able to continue those endeavors without her. I took care of him as he deteriorated after that, with advancing Parkinsonism, advanced arteriosclerosis, and cardiac disease. I took care of him during his last few days, when nothing else could be done, and helped carry him home when he had only a few hours left to live. After we took him back to his home, where he had lived for all of his life, he died the next day. At his funeral, I felt compelled to speak, and describe those same things above to his large group of friends and family. He was a man dear to my heart.
During the time that he was no longer able to work, and before the terminal days, I used to go down to the farm, just to spend a day with him. We would talk about pretty much nothing, and then go out to eat before returning him home and my returning home. It was during one of those visits that he extracted a promise from me. He did so very gently, with no demands, and I replied without hesitation. He hoped that I would always take care of his daughter, even though we were, by that time, divorced. I told him that I planned to do that. He wanted to make sure that she was always taken care of, even though he was not going to be there to look after her. He never asked anything else of me, at any way, at any time. He must have known, more than I knew.
The next few years were not easy. Several times a year, I took the trip down to visit his grave, to tell him I was having a lot of trouble keeping the promise I had made to him. I told him that his daughter was no longer committed to me, was seeing some other man, and was no longer honest with me. I told him later that she had become married to this other man, and no longer seemed devoted to our daughter. I told him that I thought maybe it was time to give up, let her go, and let her lead her own other life, whatever that might be. The rest of the conversation, at the grave site, between me and Jack, went something like this on every occasion: Jack would say, “But do you still love her?” There would be a long pause, and then I would say, “Yes, I still love her.” (Long pause) “Then are you still going to be there when she needs you?” (Long pause) “Yes, I will still love her, and will still take care of her.” (Short pause) “Thanks.” (Short pause) “Thanks, Jack, I needed that.” Then there was the drive home, full of thoughts of past pleasures, terrible mistakes and sorrows.
Now I know very well that my deceased father-in-law was not speaking to me, and no longer existed. Yet it all seemed very real, all seemed just as important, and in many ways more real than those contacts that I had with living people and their urgent problems. Jack had become my wisest counselor, even though he no longer existed, and was six feet underground. It was not easy. It was very hard. It was very hard to be completely honest with yourself, lay your soul bare, and ask forgiveness for all those awful mistakes you had made previously in life. It was hard to accept the fact that he was gone, because I had appreciated him so much. It was hard to accept the responsibility for difficult decisions all on my own, without some other caring and wise voice to help guide me. I loved that man. He was still a part of me as much as I was myself. In my mind, he was not gone. He was still a part of me.
And that’s the way it is when we speak to the dead. It is not really a matter of going through some sort of channel through which no life never ends and through which we communicate with the past and the future. It is not about reaching some other universe for a short period of time, and communicating beyond our known world. It is about closing our own circles in life. It is about finishing things we did not finish when that loved one was with us. It is about knowing that all other loved ones in our lives have greatly shaped what we are, who we are, and how we behave. We learn from all those who preceded us. All of human history is our library of knowledge and our rules of conduct. We can pray that those influences each of leaves behind us, on which all our descendants will conduct their own lives, will contain the teachings of Jesus: Love you creator God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself, whether that be your near neighbor, your far neighbor, or your neighbor on the other side of the earth, who is your enemy, and who hates you.
Communication with the dead brings us back to the reality of life.