I can’t call your Uncle. But he might visit in my dreams. That’s how I usually see them, when I am most open and my brain isn’t trying to do real-world things.
But at the thinning time? I don’t always get that option.
There are always people I am hoping to see or speak to, people I am hoping will show up. But recently, a friend visited me for the first time. We were friends for years. Not terribly close but good friends and confidants.
And I know why he came to me.
I have been feeling low, battling my trauma depression and PTSD as I near another burniversary. And then I was distracted by a song from the 90s I haven’t heard in a long time. It reminded me immediately of my time in college. I hadn’t heard it since Fredonia but it was playing clear as a bell.
“…when I come around…”
It stuck with me in the way an earworm doesn’t. And then I felt the cool whoosh of a door opening and I heard:
“Knock knock.”
And as I frowned:
“I have a joke for you.”
He was king of jokes. In five years, I never heard the same joke twice. And I never did remember a joke long enough to share it with him.
I felt him in my kitchen as clearly as if I were sitting in his office pretending I had no clue who kept filling the candy bowl that was usually empty on his desk. (It was my friend Ann and I.) He seemed to want to cheer me up.
And then he was gone. So, I played Chapin’s song “Taxi” for him, like we used to listen to together. And when I see him again, I know exactly what I’ll say:
