A letter from Dad

I got a letter on Sunday from my father. You don’t normally receive mail on Sundays, unless it’s been mis-addressed and a neighbor has had to bring it to you, as was the case here. Dad says his call to me two weeks ago had been from the ER. He says (and this is where I remind readers that unfortunately you cannot believe anything he says) that he’d had a stroke and his doctor told him he’d flat-lined for four minutes and was dead. Before the call, that is.

Dad’s an atheist, and he made a point to say there were no bright lights, no relatives waiting for him. “Dead is dead,” he writes. Then he says he checked himself out of the hospital and went home. Okay. Right.

When I relayed this story to my mother, she said – uncharacteristically for her - that it was no surprise that no one was waiting to meet him on the other side.

So I’m writing a new short story about my father. I started it before I got the letter. The letter just gives me that much more incentive. I’m inspired by a combination of subject matter I know and find interesting, and the thought that maybe this will be therapeutic for me.

On a different front, a couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with my five year old after I picked her up from daycare. It went something like this (with an acknowledgement to Kate, whose dialogs with her son are so nicely recorded in her blog).

“Mom, who did you vote for?”

“For President?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hon, I voted for Kerry this time.”

“Oh. Well. I just want President Bush to make some castles. Because there are ZERO castles in the world.”

“In America, or in the world?”

“In the world.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I wonder why he hasn’t made any castles.”

“I don’t know, but I need a castle for when I grow up because I’m going to live in a castle, and only poor people can come visit me there. And I’ll give them some of my gold.”

“How much gold will you give them?”

“Well, for one person, I’ll give six gold pieces. And then for another person, I’ll give six gold pieces, and for another person, I’ll give him six gold pieces.”

“So you’ll give everyone six gold pieces?”

“Yeah. Unless if they already have some money, then I’ll only give them one.”

“How many gold pieces will you have?”

“Oh, about five thousand.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah.”


I think about how we all just want someone to build us a castle to live in. I think about how my dad has been telling me his whole life all about the castle that is being built for him.