The Looney Boat

Warning: The looney boat is about to sail. I'll just tell the story. If I sound weird, well, who said weird sucks anyway?

With all my soul I want to believe Roxanne is watching me from over the hill. But in my zest to validate my hope, I don't want to lose my ability to think rationally. It would be so easy to twist everything that comes along to make all the pieces fit. Each day, many things are going to pass my way. I'll go bonkers if I try to attach some significance to every random event in my life. But when it happens again and again and again, the mental gears begin to grind.

In the Book of Proverbs it says that it's a foolish generation which seeks a sign. But suppose the sign is thrust upon us time and time again? Doesn't that surely mean its meaning is real and proper?

It scares me from time to time, this sensation that something's snapped. Maybe the looney boat will soon have me as a passenger. Maybe Roxi wants me to be aware of her because she knows I shall soon join her. It's not astrange thought. Between my weight and my heart, I always figured I'd go first. Naturally, she told me I was wrong. More to the point, I was wrong.

So once again, I am left with many questions, many conclusions, and no answers. I think that's the way it's supposed to be.

So why do I lie awake wondering what fate holds? It's because I've been receiving what I believe are an ongoing series of thumps from the afterlife. Allow me a moment to set the stage.

Roxanne and I had a few habits which were somewhat special to us. One of those was when I would come in from work and we would decompress, watching television and talking about the day. It was our time to listen to each other and bounce around dreams and ideas.

She would tell me about the things her clients were facing -- at least as much as she could without breaking confidentiality. I would offer suggestions, most of which were met with her observation that my input was almost as useful as what comes out of the southbound end of a northbound horse. (Ain't that a GREAT line? Stole it from Dan Rather.)

I would then tell her the latest silly things I'd gotten from listeners or co-workers. Maybe I'd have a tale from the big bad world we had long since disowned. We'd usually watch something of significance to us, basketball if it were in season, or The Beatles, or some TV show we followed, such as LOST or Hell's Kitchen.

Now when the door opens, and all that's waiting is an empty house, I'm met with a jumble of emotions. I deal with it by burying myself in the countless tasks which have arisen after her death. Tuesday night, it was the DVDs.

Roxanne had dozens, hell, hundreds, of discs she recorded, many of which she never labeled. If you have read anything I've written about her, you know how she loved The Beatles. This was even more evident as I went though the DVDs, many of which were recordings of Beatle programs or videos, especially in the flurry of publicity over the 'Beatles: Rock Band' video game which was released three weeks before she died.

So there we are. I was sorting through the DVDs, many of which we had watched on those nights I described. I still talk to her. It's not such a bizarre thing as it may appear at first -- I do talk for a living, you know. Somewhat mournfully, I said, "Honey, you have so much wonderful Beatles stuff here. Maybe I ought to find somebody to watch them with me." I just meant that I hoped I could share her passion for her idols, and that someone might get pleasure from the shows she lovingly recorded. Suddenly in my mind appeared a distinct picture of her face looking a little uncertain. And it was though I heard her say "I'm right here with you. Why can't you watch them with me?"

I began to cry. All the things she can now do and yet, she still wants to have our time together? This was a breathtaking realization, because when she was alive, I often showed a great talent for being a giant pain in the ass. In my most hidden dreams, I never dared to think that it would mean so much for her to continue to share things like that with me.

So Wednesday night I came home from work, remembering all this.. I sat down and turned on the television. I had left it on ESPN News. They were doing this story about the dominance of some team -- I don't recall who -- but they began with a graphic of the Beatles! The anchor mentioned that at one point The Beatles had the top five songs on the pop charts.

The Beatles. On ESPN? What the fuck? How often does this happen? OK, I guess she was really looking forward to this. So we watched The Beatles and I would talk to her as I often do. As I said, that's not so strange. I am a verbal person. It's natural for me to vocalize things. It's what I've been trained to do.

The next night we watched someting else from the Beatles. And now, barring something to interfere, we're continuing a tradition.

Flash forward to Friday night. (That reminds me: When in the sam hill is ABC bringing back 'Flash Forward?' Anyway... jump to Friday night.) I decided to watch Conan's final Tonight show. He closed by by joining some friends to play 'Free Bird.' It occurred to me that this was one of the three songs played at her funeral. She always said she wanted it to be played when she died. Then again so did most women of her era that I ever met back in the day. 'Free Bird' has become a symbol for encores and for closure, so I didn't think much of it at the time.

I went back to sorting through a box of audio CD's. Sure enough, a couple of CD's later, I slipped an unlabeled disc into the player. The first cut it turned out to be "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party," one of the others songs we played at her funeral.

Okay, even that I can pass off as coincidence, although a much more striking coincidence. Things like that are bound to happen.

I needed to see if the CD was all Beatles, or just a bunch of random music files from her computer. Sampling another cut to play, I stopped cold in my tracks. Lo and behold, it was the third song from her funeral, the Kentucky fight song. I got scared for a moment, before realizing that was the wrong thing to feel. This can't be torture. It's just a nudge from beyond to let me know that the universe works out pretty well, and it's important that I know God still sees some purpose in me. I've been wondering about that a lot lately.

Now comes the final touch: I'm minding my own business -- working on the first draft of this post, actually -- when on comes a show about the restoration of the Sphinx. Ancient Egypt was one of Roxanne's passions. We had even planned to see the King Tut exhibit in Chicago but were not able to work out arrangements. As it's a subject I'm interested in as well, I left the show on. They mentioned an online program which allows the user to go inside the a 3-D model of the pyramids and see up to date reports on the progress of the restoration.

As much to myself as to her, I said "I wish they'd had that when you were with me." It was as though I heard her saying "Duh. Now I can go there any time and I don't have to use the damned computer." I guess she really does have a ringside seat on the excavation, just as I believe she can watch George Harrison jam anytime and see the Cats play from a perch as good as any in Rupp Arena.

Today's lesson should be one of patience, of deductive interpretation. But I don't know how to interpret it. I don't know that I should try. I only know that of the things I've written since I began LIFE 4.0, this one has taken the most thought.

I can't begin to comprehend how life works in this world, let alone how it works in whatever lies beyond. Because humans are the dominant species, we think we should have all the answers. We think knowledge is our right. Yet we really know so little and the thought that somehow we could understand it is akin to blasphemy.

A baby can feel the sunbeam but knows nothing of the world outside the window. We can see the crack of light around the closed door but what lies beyond it remains hidden. We are told to be patient. In time, life's mysteries will become clearer.

To hell with learning patience. I want answers. At the same time I know I'll never have answers -- at least not in this life -- so I settled for those precious nuggets I can hug for comfort and to stengthen my faith. I use them as fuel to go on living...and to repel the thought that the one precious thing in my life is gone forever.

I refuse to accept that way of thinking. Yet I worry that if living in denial is poisonous, that I'll never realize it in time to keep it form being my final act as a sane man. And I'm scared shitless that through my defiance, I may writing my own epitaph.