Alive at the DMV Part 9

December 15, 2012: our fourth and final time at the Jeep dealership. We take possession of our new car. We drive it off the lot. We look at my phone. 5:55. All four times, people!

PART 10

"Alive at the DMV Part 8"

A quickie: went back to the Jeep dealership yesterday, did our business, got back into our car, and the time was.......5:55. And the last three numbers on the odometer were........555. Someone tell me this veil between the worlds is not getting thinner and thinner and thinner!

My number at Native Foods was not, however, 55 this time. It was 69...not a number to turn my back on either, thank you very much.

<See Part 9>

DMV Part 7!

"December 4, 2012"

Of course this is going to be about cars. If you have been following this DMV thread all along, you’ll understand: after our Jeep test-drive last week, Lily and I returned to our favorite Jetta, where Lily pointed out that it was 5:55; then we saw that the license plate in front of us had five fives, after which celestial communication Lily announced, “My dad wants us to get a Jeep but he wants us to get it from a different dealership. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”

He’s still around. More evidence? I wrote this entire blog and headed to Native Foods for lunch, and was handed my order number, which was 55. Before I explain to newcomers (or you can just go back and begin at DMV Part 1 for some remarkable heavenly stories) I just have to pause to honor that the veil between the worlds is delightfully thin; I still don’t understand where “dead” people are, how they can be here, how they can send signs and summons, and I don’t have to understand.

The night months ago when I first posted about the 55s, I pressed “publish,” left the house, started the Jetta, and was delighted to see that the time on its always-expressive dashboard was 5:55.  Satisfying  punctuation after my 55-heavy blog post.

Imagine how guilty (or at least ambivalent) I must feel about selling that car.

But its lowered suspension and low-profile wheels make us cringe over bumps; it feels like we’re breaking the car in half. On the other hand, I regularly do 100mph on Lake Shore Drive—80, actually, before I’m even off the entrance ramp—and as the g-forces press into me, through the euphoria I realize not only should I not be doing this, I should not be giving my 16-year old a car that is capable of doing this. (God, I like to go fast. Maybe I won’t sell it.)

I’ve grown to love the Jetta. Yes. Strong words for a car that I initially found irritating. Lily and recently I decided that the only vehicle that could possibly tempt and un-guilt us would be the opposite car: a Jeep. A red Jeep. A slow (ie safe), visible red Jeep that will munch potholes and get us through the 2012 Apocalypse in one piece.

Five seconds into our first Jeep test drive, we glanced at each other with a look that acknowledged, “We are bad-ass!” Sitting so high up we could drive right over the Jetta—if it didn’t drive under us first. In red, it was unmilitaristic and frankly kind of hot…with us in it.  Back into this red Jeep when you’re parallel parking in front of us and it will SEVER your bumper.

Based on Lily’s intuition I made an appointment with a different dealership, one that felt more Barrett-approved. For some reason I got a slew of 4:44s, all day long, weird because they don't have meaning to me other than the inherent beauty of the repeating numbers.  Fours: whatever.

More fours later though.

The guy on the phone for the car dealership has a great voice. So savory. That morning I had asked Barrett for some car-buying assistance; it’s his specialty. I once told him he should start a business helping women buy cars, and just be their advocate. I can't tell from Kevin’s sexy voice how old he is or even what race, which is intriguing. We arrive at the dealership and there are greeters, like bouncers, outside, hanging, waiting for vulnerable buyers, and a big round black guy—a bluesy sort of guy—approaches and introduces himself to us and I say we're here to see Kevin, and he says I'll take you to Kevin, and we have to sit in plastic dealership chairs while we wait for Kevin and Kevin arrives and I am—hang on, I have to  break in to say this: Barrett and I had a tiny wedding with dinner for 20 at a favorite restaurant. When our waiter came to the table he was so hot-African. Protected by my hours-old wedding ring, I could not help say, "Are you my wedding present?" (That’s me, after zero cocktails.)

So Kevin is introduced, and maybe it was the insouciant way his shirttails poked out from his v-neck, but I feel a completely inappropriate remark welling up--just like at my wedding dinner...where Barrett was, of course, also present. I am saying to myself, "Don't say it, it's totally inappropriate," --but I don't even know what I'm about to say. I just know, in that manic moment, I shouldn't. When Kevin announces that the bluesman is going to take care of us, he departs and I backhand Lily on the thigh to see if she was having as good a time as I was and she looks at me and says, "MOM. Pull yourself together.”

But my point is, we were at the right dealership and this was going to be a treat: in addition to Kevin reminding me of the manic moment when I saw our wedding-waiter, the bluesman reminded me so much of the salesman who sold Barrett my current Honda CRV, the car guy who was so so good at being a car guy that Barrett looked him up years later to buy another car from him. The car guy who was so so good that in a world where I don’t remember names AT ALL (please don’t test me at a party!) I remember Tony's. Tony was an experience—a car experience—that Barrett and I had shared in a major way. Tony is now a Baptist minister so he can’t sell cars; Barrett is now “dead” so he can’t buy cars, but I sure did feel them both there, orchestrating an experience that I otherwise didn’t want any part of.  Hi, guys! I was overjoyed.

To be honest, it was not easy to stay in mirth at a goddamn car dealership, but our guy met me at my level, totally got how I operate, and the only time he got a bit sales-y I said, “I want you to know that we have two cars that we really like and I have no car payments and I'm happy to keep it that way, and we don't actually NEED a car. In fact I’m happy not to buy a car at all. And the more you push me, the more I want to keep my old car.” I saw Lily, out of the corner of my eye, frantically disagreeing, which was not helpful to my buying process, but I ignored it. Later in the conversation, the bluesman said, "Now normally I would talk for ten minutes about why you needed to buy the car tonight..." and I interrupted, with a smile, "But you know if you do that I won't return your calls or EVER talk to you again." I am learning how liberating it is to just say the thing instead of thinking it needs to be said in some special way.

When the bluesman walked away to consult with his people for the seventh time, an hour into negotiating, I told Lily I had no recollection of what his name even was. How embarrassing, now that we had even seen pictures of his kids. She didn’t remember either—odd for her, normal for me. She volunteered, for a mere $10, to ask his name.

David. Barrett’s brother’s name.

When we were leaving David told us that daughters’ names both started with L. Lily wanted to guess his son’s name.

“Is it also an L? Leon,” I said before she could guess, because it had to be Leon; it was the boy-baby name that Barrett and I had completely disagreed on—me being pro-Leon of course—a big issue between us. But no.

“Hint: it’s the same as my dad’s,” David said, and I said, “David!”

Indeed.

“David, David, David,” said David, “All Davids, my dad, his dad, David David David,” and I almost said, “OK BARRETT, STOP!” No need to hammer it home like that. We got it. Buy the Jeep.

And then David said one more thing. To Lily.

“Family,” said David. “Family is the most important thing. Remember that. Remember your family. Family,” said David.

Yes, I shed a tear. At the car dealership. Barrett’s presence was palpable.

 So I took a walk when we got home, car half-bought. It was a balmy night in December.

On the walk I realized I was not entirely relaxed about taking on a car payment and mind you it's a tiny car payment but that's not the point. The discomfort is the point and as a yoga teacher I know what to do about discomfort. It was rather an arresting thought so I just stopped and arrested myself: listened to the wind in the trees, felt the balmy breeze, and was grateful I could even be outside and warm at the same time, while minutes passed. At some point I thought, “I wonder if I look insane,” and then I made myself relax through that discomfort until I felt a level of prosperity: “buying a new car makes me feel prosperous!” and I was good to go.

So I walked a few steps further, and there on the sidewalk was a dollar bill, moist with dew and sticking there so it couldn’t possibly blow away, and its timing after that prosperity meditation was so uncanny that I had to stop and pick up the penny from heaven (inflation!) and it was also sort of ego-busting in itself to stoop to pick up a dollar when someone else might need it more, when someone else must have dropped it, yet at the same time, the night had been all about money and here some is! So I peel it of the sidewalk and glance at it, and it has four fours on it. Another 4444!

And maybe all dollar bills have four fours; how would I even know? I have never stared one down. Whether or not they do, this one did. I don't need to analyze or know why or know what anything means...the Universe has ways of communicating, the Universe IS communicating, and how cool that we are in a dialogue—I’m honored, standing there, on December 4.

Still in the magic, still in the prosperity, knowing Lily’s daddy is so not dead, savoring the dollar bill with the four fours on it, I walk a few more steps and a happy guy rides past on his bike singing a Christmas carol and I catch the words, "a jolly happy soul!" It’s euphoric; it’s over the top, why those precise words, in this moment of soul-connection?

It must be heaven on earth.

To ground myself, to bring it back to reality, I look at my phone, open facebook, and the first post on my newsfeed is from my friend Chrissy, saying, “Can you feel it?! Can you feel the SHIFT?!!!!”

“Yes,” I comment. Yes.

Having written all of the above the following day, I headed to Native Foods, where my order number 55 was presented to me, as perfect punctuation bestowed upon me by a generous Universe that loves us all far more than we can fathom.

When Yoga Meets Politics

No matter who wins the election, 50% of us will be dissatisfied. Rather than thinking we know which individual political candidate will create the change we want, what if we hold some other common vision? Rather than needing to know exactly how you want that vision to LOOK, or who’s going to pay for it, imagine that there is a bigger and better version of the world than you’d ever dreamed…and FEEL it. What if we all did that? Why not walk around with a vision of the world you'd like to live in, and meet your opponents in the middle?

I Can See Clearly Now (DMV Part 6)

In May we were driving to the eye doctor. Lily needed new glasses. I’d been putting it off. I could no longer delegate this to the other parent. We took Barrett’s road-worthy car and were driving on the Edens, the route he and Lily always took, to his house as well as to the eye doctor, which was in a northern suburb. He was always delighted to take her, due to his love for both driving and Lily. So a couple months after he died, I am driving their familiar route on the Edens Expressway when my passenger says, “I feel my dad.”

“You do?” I say, to stall, to check in and see if I too feel him. I don’t.

“How do you know?” I ask, not because I don’t believe her, but because I wonder how she will articulate it. “I just know,” she answers.

I totally understand. We drive on. It’s not surprising that she would feel him in his car, on that expressway, going to the eye doctor to which he had always driven her. And yes, it could have been…memories. Especially since I didn’t feel him. But.

But.

We get to the eye doctor and are asked to sign in. Out of habit I take the pen but Lily says, “Mom. I can sign myself in.” I hand her the pen and she writes her name and then pauses.

(Hold on. I am going to pause too, right now, just to ask: how many Barretts do you know? Really. Stop a moment and ask yourself.)

Lily gestures with the pen, and I look at the sign-in pad and the name above hers: Barrett Adams.

Barrett. Somehow he arrived before us.

What if “coincidence” is an amazing alignment of the Universe in which a cosmic wink is provided? Do we believe enough in the goodness of the powers that be to allow for the possibility of that level of synchronicity?

Really—how many Barretts do you know?

Postscript: for those of you who have any interest in the guru/spiritual growth aspects of these stories, I want to add that yes, I was interested in seeing just who this Barrett at the eye doctor was. And I had nothing to do but wait. At some point I heard a mom say, “Barrett! Sit down!” and I looked up and he was about five or six, performing some antics (a.k.a. experiencing the joy of being alive) in the reception area, and the message of that moment for me, upon seeing his joyful being, was: rather than imagining our Barrett as the always-wrong, disappointing ex-husband, when I connect with him from now on, I am to imagine him as the full-of-potential, energetic little Barrett that he no doubt once was…before I was even born.

<See Parts 7-9>

This One's a Jem (DMV Part 5)

The efficiency with which Lily disposed of her dad’s possessions was admirable. Yet at the same time, she absolutely knew what to keep; she was efficient but not indiscriminate. In addition to his car, and lots of memorabilia, she kept all of his t-shirts, the smell of which will move her to tears. 

His very well chosen, somewhat highbrow cds got a good price at the used cd store. The day after selling a big box of them, we found yet more, and Lily wanted to sell that second box immediately.  There is not a huge commonality of musical taste among the three of us; it was easier to find a movie we could all enjoy than a cd we could all listen to. Nevertheless, Barrett would offer me music; I’d accept his cd and give it back a month later saying I’d never had a chance to listen to it. I try not to believe that this kind of stuff, stuff I did and said, and the way I steadfastly refused to like his ideas, contributed to his death. Though it certainly didn’t contribute to his life.

JEM was a cd of Barrett’s that I kind of liked--I mean there was a cd by someone named Jem, and I liked one track, “They,” a very minimalist and ironic song. I never actually told him that I liked it; I only heard it because it was on Lily’s iPod, not because I had listened to Barrett’s cd, which I had returned to him without opening. Only later, hearing the Jem song on Lily’s iPod, did I find it compelling. I could see why he thought I'd like it. Lily says it was only on there because her dad had insisted she put a few songs on her iPod that he liked. (Good thing we never took driving vacations.)

So anyway, we sell all Barrett’s cds, including JEM, find another whole box the next day, and Lily asks if, that very second, we can head back to the cd store and sell this newly found box. I don't want to, even though I envy her lack of procrastination. It’s out of the way and inconvenient--the used CD store in Evanston that she and her dad frequented. And this is something I’d normally say no to, but just days into having a child without a dad, I was willing to do a few inconvenient things if they would make her feel somehow better, or more empowered. Sigh.

So we go. We park. And we hoist the box of sellable CDs out of the trunk. I open the door for her while she carries them into the used CD store.

We look at each other and say a silent NO WAY.

Because yes. They are playing our song. The one song. The only song Barrett had ever introduced me to that I LIKED. Of all the cds they could choose. Of all the songs that could be playing from that cd when we walk in. From the box we sold them the night before. The synchronicity was staggering.

“I’m sorry, so sorry

I’m sorry it’s like this…

I’m sorry, so sorry

I’m sorry we do this”

 ~Jem, “They”

GO TO PART 6

DMV Part 4: Car Wax

“I’m not sure how much to believe,” emailed my mom, about the dead ex-husband blog series.

There’s no need for you to believe anything. It's still a good story. (And if you are wanting to skip these  musings for the good story, scroll down to "The Car Detailing Groupon.")

“How do you know it’s him?” asked a friend.

I don’t know. I just know.

How do you know it’s me when I call you? Because your phone says it’s me and I sound like me…but there’s still a level of belief involved since you can’t see or touch me. With texting, even more so. Indeed I am more comfortable in the energetic/esoteric realms than most people, but for me, this heavenly communication does seem to be only a step beyond cell phones.

The way I know it’s him?  --is that I am moved to tears.  Something in the physical world reminds me of him. Then I feel or (silently) hear him. There is a timing involved, and a visceral sense. Some level of trust. A wave passes through me, a wave of relief and connection.

“Oh, hi!” (And guilt. Every time.)

Incidentally, that is all a guru is: someone who mirrors you back to yourself. Shows you what's inside. A guru is not all-knowing (“he’s a computer guru”). That’s an Americanization of the concept. A guru is simply someone who lights up the darkness—inside you. So I am going to go way out on a limb and say that Barrett is a guru to me now (he was when he was alive, too, but I was too blinded by my projections to see). Without the immediacy of his physical form to remind me of our shared past, I can now clearly see my internal self, my projections that I heaped onto him, my judgments about his life, and the residue of all that, which presents itself in the form of guilt. I can see it all in a way I couldn’t, when he was alive.

Preventing death is the American way. How could I have prevented his death? That question assumes there is no God-force, no meant-to-be, no greater Universal force that has its own Divine Timing no matter what…and I do “believe in,” because I have experienced, all of those; although I see that it was his departure time, the human part of me does still feel that “I could have done more.” We American people fear death, dread death, want to prevent death, and feel that death is a failure. But “death is bad” is just a point of view--such an ingrained point of view that we don’t even realize it’s a point of view; it is a TRUTH, to us! Death is bad! Everybody knows that. Don’t we?

We feel guilty if we think we could have helped prevent it. In addition, in my case, I feel guilty that I wasn’t nice to him in life.

“He totally doesn’t care about that anymore, Mom,” Lily assured me, when I mentioned that two days before he died he’d asked me to have dinner with him and I’d said no. I didn’t feel guilty for saying no; I felt guilty about how I’d said it, as if he’d asked, “Do you want to dine on grasshoppers?” I hadn't felt the least bit guilty at the time I'd said it.

Through my guilt and the thick enculturation of death-is-bad beliefs, my experience of Barrett is that he is happier now. That death for him was not bad. In every communication we’ve had with him, there’s been an inherent message: life after life is great! 

This does have a soothing effect on the guilt.

Many of the people I’ve talked to about death since Barrett died have a level of guilt attached to the death of a loved one. People whose loved one died a slow death, however, do not seem to have this guilt factor; they had time to make amends. Frankly I’m not sure that even if Barrett had died a slow death, I would have actually made amends. I can more realistically imagine myself at his death bed, saying, “You should have taken better care of yourself,” and, “You should have listened to me when I said to drink green juice.” I needed to experience the finality before I could truly see the invisible box I had put him in, the box called “No matter what he does or says, he's wrong.” Everything he said to me in the last ten or 15 years had to penetrate my projection of: this man has disappointed me. And my projection was thick with resentment. Until the minute he died, I thought he deserved my resentment.

I can't thank him enough for helping reveal that to me.

Whether or not anyone else agrees that it’s Barrett, my experience is the same, as are the results.

Even if it's not a Cosmic Wink from a deceased person, if even just the memory of Barrett reminds me, or Lily, to be conscious in that moment, to see and feel what's inside us—does it matter if his presence is “real”? Either way, it has opened us to a bigger perspective on life, has opened me up to more gratitude for each living breath, has added a really cool mystery to our life.

That reminds me.

THE CAR DETAILING GROUPON!

It was only a month after Barrett’s departure. I’d been wanting to get his car detailed. Even with his deep and abiding love for the Jetta, he didn’t get it waxed nearly enough, in my opinion. Black cars need to be waxed often! They soak it up!

I didn’t want to get Johnny detailed just anywhere. I had a certain place in mind: River North Hand Car Wash (call two weeks ahead, because they are very busy waxing people’s Porsches), unless they didn’t come through with a Groupon, which, why would they? It is a high-end car wash and it’s always full…and expensive. So not unlike a bikini wax, I needed the car wax to be half price. It was somewhat of a reach to think this ONE car wash would send out a Groupon, but stranger things have happened (see DMV Part 1), and I was willing to be patient. It’s not like car wax is an emergency. Unlike a bikini wax.

So I set the intention, back-burnered it, woke up one morning, and much to my surprise and delight there was a Groupon for River North Hand Car Wash! And the date of this Groupon was not just any date. It was April 12...our wedding anniversary! Could not help but notice. (Would this be considered my present to him, or his present to me, I wondered.)

Our anniversary interaction over the past ten years since we divorced:

Him: Happy Anniversary!

Me: Grrrrrr.

I held on to the anniversary Groupon for a number of days, pondering when it would be most convenient to not have a car for a few hours. When a gap surfaced in my schedule, I called the elite car wash.

“Sorry,” they said, “We are fully booked all week. Our first available opening is…a week from Friday.”

“I’ll take it!” I said, grateful that there was any opening at all. I hung up and entered it into my calendar…noticing that this "first available opening" for Barrett’s car, two Fridays away, was going to occur on…Barrett’s birthday! (My present to him, apparently.) Happy Anniversary, Happy Birthday, and thanks for the really clean fast car that hold so many memories and sports such fascinating, cosmically winking numbers. Jai Guru!

By the way, if you would enjoy more stories about signs from departed loved ones, you can read about our friend Joe, the dad of a boy in Lily’s Waldorf class. Our families met at Waldorf when our kids were a year old, before the word 'blog' existed (it was coined in May 1999). Joe died unexpectedly three years ago and not in a million years would I have thought Cole’s mom Katybeth and I would both be writing blogs about our kids’ dead dads and their invisible hands in our kids’ lives.

SPEAKING OF JOE, when Lily and I were living in New Mexico, Cole came to visit his grandparents in Albuquerque, so we made plans to see him. He was on winter break and Lily wasn't, so I planned to pick her up from school and head to ABQ. She got in the car.

“How was school?” My inevitable question.

“MOM.”

Me being silent. Sometimes with a teenager, this works better than guessing.

“MOM. Is this the day we’re going to see Cole?”

Affirmative.

"Today, for sure?"

Yes.

“Ok, so today? In algebra? We were plotting three coordinates? And guess what mine were?”

No idea, not sure what coordinates even are, or how to plot them.

“J., O., and E!!”

This!—on the very day we were meeting Joe’s much-loved son. I had read Katybeth’s blogs avidly and knew Joe was not gone-gone. I’m not sure what kind of proof other people want, but I needed none. He had always liked Lily. Joe (and whatever powers-that-be orchestrate these things) was blessing the adventures of Lily and Cole with what we now call a “Cosmic Wink.”

<Go to Part 5!>

At Last: the DMV (Part 3)

Before we go to the DMV I just have to mention that about six months before he died, Barrett gave me a book. He mentioned that his friend Maggie knew the author. He told me a bit about the book, which he had read and apparently enjoyed tremendously because he was foisting it upon me while I was saying, “No thank you, I really don’t think I will get to this book anytime soon,” and he was saying, "It’s ok, really, just take it and read it when you can…just take it!"

Fast forward six months, and Lily and I are packing to move from New Mexico back to Chicago after her dad died, and I give her an easy job: books. Most had already been packed and there were just enough on the shelves to make it not look bare. When I came in to check on her progress there were only three books left.

“These don’t fit in the box,” she said.

One was the book I had grudgingly accepted from Barrett. I looked at it for what I immediately realized was the first time. It was a book about life after death. I was stunned. Of all the books he could have given me—of all the books that could have been left on the shelf after packing hundreds. I had a sudden desire to actually read it. The author was, like Louise Hauck, a death psychic. In order to be of more help to her clients, she had asked the Universe for an experience of life after death, while she was living. The book is a description of what she learned on her adventure. It’s great! (Echoes of the Soul, by Echo Bodine.) Even though I cannot grasp “where” Barrett is, if he’s not in his body but he’s “here,” the book made so much sense and did not promote a belief system. It’s been the perfect guide to his death—and I can’t thank him enough for making me just take it.

So: I went to the DMV.

I needed an Illinois drivers license, and I needed to get Barrett’s car title and plates put in my name. He had no will, and I had filled out an affidavit saying that everything of his should go to Lily--but I needed his car to go to me because she was 15. I had neither my divorce papers nor my name-change papers from when I changed my first name, so my identity, for DMV purposes, was confusing.

Should I get my drivers license first? Or the plates? There was no right answer. I chose plates. I entered and explained what I needed and was handed a lengthy form to fill out. Armed with my envelope of important papers, I found a work station and sighed.

“Do you need help with that?”

“I’m fine,” I said, barely glancing up.

“If you need any help at all, that’s what I’m here for.”

I looked up. Who would even say that? He was, like many of the DMV employees, African American, but much older. And rather than having the feel of a civil servant, he was…well…elegant. He felt like a butler, or a history professor at Harvard; maybe it was the cardigan, or the wire-rimmed glasses. He seemed so out of place.

“Do you think I need help?” I asked. The six-page form was laid out before me and I was already confused by the first question: my address. I was living in Chicago but every bit of ID said I was living in New Mexico. I began to explain my situation.

“I’m sorry,” he said, about the death of Lily’s dad. “Let me help,” he said, taking the form, and began crossing sections out. Maybe he felt more like a musician. So polished, an older man, but apparently not old enough to retire. He gracefully cut my forms down to a manageable length and reappeared two more times over the course of my form-filling to soothingly ask how it was going. I wanted to cry in his arms both times, so grateful that he’d asked.

I was finished. I looked for him, so I could thank him. He took my hand in both of his and looked me in the eyes. The world around us stopped. 

“We appreciate you,” he said, and walked off.

A wave of emotion moved through me.

Wiping tears away—yes--I proceeded to the next station where I was given a number: 92. Which is numerologically an 11. In my admittedly imaginative but at the same time validated-by-a-lifelong-death-psychic view of the world, Barrett had been present in that maître ‘d, DMV, helpful-greeter-guy. I had felt him. 

Next stop: cashier. “Technically I should charge you $115, but I have a little leeway,” said the surely should have retired by now white guy behind the bullet-proof glass. “I’m gonna check this other box and charge you $15. You’ve been through enough.” This DMV was awash in empathy. And since when does the DMV have leeway?

After paying one more (larger and very unheavenly) fee at another window, I felt compelled to return to the nice old white guy. I felt like I was at a spiritual retreat and it was time to seek out those I’d had connected with.

“I just came back to say thanks,” I said. (Actually just I wanted to see if he was real.)

“That’s not why you’re back, I know why you’re back,” said his merry crony—another retirement-age guy behind the glass.

“Fine,” I played along, “I’m back because I think he’s cute!”

“I knew it! Be here at one. That’s when we go to lunch,” he urged. I was buoyant. PART 4

DMV Part 2!

After we ate our Dexter-served lunch we ran some errands and I dropped off Lily at a friend’s, circled around the block a couple times looking for a parking place, parked, and was thrilled to see the odometer: 111.1.

The following morning, coincidentally, I was scheduled to be on a conference call with a woman who communicates with the deceased, as her career. I was only marginally interested, but here’s why I signed up for the call: one day while I was having a moment of post-death Barrett-pondering, I checked my email, and just then an email loaded from one Louise Hauck. She is a psychic that Barrett and I both saw in 1992, and I guess I’d signed up for her email list.

Over the past 19 years I’ve deleted many of her emails, but never took myself off her email list. About once a year, Barrett would ask, “Hey, who was that psychic I really liked? The one we saw in the 90s?” and I would, in my most grudging ex-wife way, reply, “Louise Hauck! Why don’t you write it down?!” Mind you, he asked this question only about once a year, and it wouldn’t have been annoying if it had been asked by anyone else in the world, and he was never the least bit annoyed when I requested information that only he would know. But regardless: Barrett had kept the name “Louise Hauck” in my mind for the last 19 years with his annual question, so when I saw her email pop up just as I was pondering Barrett’s death, I actually opened it up and read it for a change. In that moment I “knew” that he was wanting me to sign up for her conference call. The price was right. So I did.

Each participant was allowed one question. Not wanting to appear too self-centered, I asked a question that maybe had some group appeal: “How can I tell the difference between my dead ex-husband communicating with me, versus my imagination, versus my own intuition?” That's all I said, and all she knew.

Right off, she said, “You know those things he does? I call them ‘cosmic winks.’” (I had not told her about the car, the numbers, or Lucy reading from Nevermore. I had told her nothing.) She continued, “He sure likes to show off! And the more you notice those winks, the more there will be. He is gratified by how you’ve transcended your human relationship feelings about him and experience him as a soul. Does this resonate with you at all?” I told her I was thrilled. That she was right on. That if he showed off as a human I would have found it irritating, but as a soul he was quite entertaining. I described a dream Lily had had:

Her dad appeared in her dream and said, “I can do all these cool things now. Watch this!” and he proceeded to show her the night sky, pointing out a constellation that looked like a ping-pong table and paddles. Then he summoned the constellation to come down to earth, and Lily and Barrett played ping-pong. He was showing off, for sure. She woke up thrilled. He’d had a ping-pong table in his living room when he lived in the city.

Louise Hauck asked me if I slept on my side, which indeed I do. She said Barrett wanted me to invite him into my dreams, and I said I wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon. She also included a message for Lily from her dad which, when I relayed it, made sense. In answer to my question, she said that his messages “piggyback” on my intuition, which is why it’s difficult to tell them apart. She didn’t say a thing about my imagination.

I walked away from the call feeling validated—even though the numbers we consistently received from him were validating enough…it was great to have a “professional” label it. Cosmic winks. Awesome and undeniable. I sat down and emailed Louise Hauck a thank-you note.

The following weekend, I was driving Lily to her friend’s. I glanced at the car thermometer and noticed it was 55 degrees. “Dude. I am convinced that your dad changes the temperature.  It’s 55 degrees a lot. And when I look at my phone, the temperature isn’t 55 degrees.”

Lily was only slightly impressed. I continued.

“So I asked your dad,”  I said carefully, waiting for rebuttal, “and he said that it’s easier to mess with the temperature as opposed to, for instance, the clock, which is based on real time, and the mileage, which is based on real space.”

“Mom,” she replied. “How do you know he answered?”

“I don’t. I have no idea. I asked. That’s what the answer was. It could be my imagination. But that's not the type of thing I'd even think.”

Lily had an idea: “Ok Daddy, if you’re really here and you can do that, please make the temperature go up three degrees.”

You know the end of this story. I won’t even say it.  The whole thing took all of one minute. But that’s not all.

We arrive at Lily’s friend’s, early, so I pull out my phone and open my email. Just in case we were still not believing Barrett enjoyed moving our thermometer to 55 degrees, in that moment the only email that loaded was from…Louise Hauck.

Does it matter what it said? Absolutely not. But what it said was: “Hi Rachel, I just found this email in my outbox! I had sent it last week in response to yours. I have no idea why it didn’t get sent, but anyway…”

I answered, told her how perfect the timing was, much better than if her email had been “on time.”

Lily thought it was pretty cool that of all people, Louise Hauck would email just then. But there's something I’d left out.

“Lily—do you even know what year your dad was born?”

Indeed she did not: 1955.

NEXT: I will talk about the DMV. Really. I promise:
<Go to Part 3!>

Dead Ex-Husband...Alive at the DMV! (Part 1)

“I had the greatest time at the DMV yesterday,” I said to more than one person today. Of course I sound sarcastic. Who has a great time at the DMV?

“It was heaven on earth,” I continue, because I love this story. As a yoga teacher, I’ve said those words before, but never in regard to visiting a government agency.

“I’m getting along so great with my ex-husband lately,” I also like to say, provoking odd smiles and quizzical looks—because he’s dead. “Seriously,” I add, “We have never gotten along better. Our communication is stellar.”

In truth our communication (never that great in life) is indeed profound, and it has caused a shift that I never thought would happen between us.

I sort of knew it was the beginning of the end when I heard him say, “I don’t really care that much about my car anymore--ever since I got that scratch.” I had no idea what scratch he was even talking about, and didn’t actually even see it until days after he’d died. In truth I hadn’t actually been listening to him for, well, about 10 years. No doubt he’d told me at some point about a devastating scratch on the bumper of his much-loved car, but I’d tuned him out. I didn’t care quite as much about his car. But a couple weeks before he died I was borrowing it and promised to park it yards and yards away from all the other cars, and that's when he’d said it. “I don’t care that much about my car anymore.” Sure he did! He still cared far much more than most people care about their car. What he was saying was that he was no longer compelled to keep it pristine…and in that moment, I saw that a part of him had given up. In general.

“I feel like I’m dying,” he had said, apropos of nothing, a few weeks before he died. I experienced his comment as a metaphor, or maybe a way to hook into me emotionally, get sympathy for the ongoing pain in his arm. Because of course he wasn’t dying-dying.

And then he did.

And now—not to be unemotional or unempathetic or…anything that I could be accused me of being when I put this thought out there—but, now, other than the fact that I have a devastatingly fatherless daughter, whose father prized her above all else, a daughter who misses her dad tremendously every moment of the day, but other than that, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be: we now have an angel, an unseen advocate, an angel, whoever thought I’d call him that, an angel who not only makes the daily logistics of life go more smoothly, but who has shown me that the veil between the worlds is very very thin, thin enough to ingrain the message that death is not to be feared.

He helps us out so much. Just like he said he would. On the night he died.

“I can be of much more help to you from where I am now," he said, verbatim. My memory in general is not great, but these words still echo in my mind. This, in the middle of the night, as I was tossing and turning and realizing why Jewish people sit shiva: I wanted some company. I was not so comfortable with the massive presence of Barrett’s soul, which felt like it was sitting on the bed beside me. “Back OFF,” I had said at one point, that night, silently, and it worked, and then I felt guilty, like, the poor guy died, and I am still pushing him away. Plus I was a bit afraid he wouldn’t return.

The second time he spoke, the following day, when I was still in the thick of crisis and mentally dealing with logistics that are only now sorting themselves out, he said, “Let me help you with that, Rachel.” As if I were carrying a heavy package. That’s just how he’d have worded it in life. And I let him help. I’d been doing a Reiki healing on a lovely wheelchair-bound client. I wasn’t thinking I needed help. But the minute I let him “help,” I felt worlds open. A stream of energy poured forth through me, into her, in such abundance that I was moved to tears.

I needed to tell Lily. She was not distraught, because she didn’t yet realize what I had known the minute I’d heard: she would never see her dad again, ever, ever, ever. It hadn’t hit yet, and wouldn’t for a few weeks.

“Your dad is around, and he wants to help us,” I said, in a bedtime conversation that I had requested, at the end of the day. We did a little meditation. Then I described both communications.

“That sounds scary,” she said. 

“The first time was scary, but the second one wasn’t,” I said.

Lily said good night to me and walked upstairs to the bedroom she was sharing with her best friend Lucy. On the way up, she said silently, “Daddy, if you’re here, send me a sign, and please don’t have it be scary.” Then she walked into the bedroom.

Lucy said, “Listen!” and proceeded to read Lily a paragraph from a book written by Barrett’s favorite author—a paragraph he had read to Lily a few months before.

“Thank you, Daddy!” Lily exclaimed, aloud, when Lucy had finished. The chances of Lucy having Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and reading that particular paragraph to Lily moments after she’d asked for a sign from her dad…were so staggeringly slim that I am still in awe. Of him. Of my ex-husband. Of the soul of my ex-husband. People ask about the content of that paragraph and and I would love to report that it was beautiful or inspiring. In fact it was an amusing and somewhat raunchy description of sex between homeless people. Had he asked me, those months before, if he should read it to her, I might have said no. But he did. And so did Lucy. After years of wondering why on earth I had picked THIS man to marry, THIS man to have a baby with, I no longer wondered. In an instant, flash! This is who he truly is! The father of my child is an amazing creator. In spirit form, the logistics that so eluded him on earth are now his specialty.

And this is who we all, truly, are. We are all souls. We meet a new soul, in the body, here on earth, and it is so easy to see Soul. But after a few months, or a year, or ten years, or the first sleepless year of a baby’s life, or a divorce, the soul becomes more and more impossible to see.

“Send Barrett Light,” a dear spiritual counselor of mine used to counsel, when we were having relationship difficulties.

One time I showed up for an appointment and said, up front, “I am NOT sending Barrett light, so don’t even go there.” That’s how much I couldn’t see his soul, this soul, this spirit that, for the last three months, has been blessing our life in a tangible way.

He is why I could experience heaven on earth at the DMV.

Despite that scratch on the bumper, Barrett is still all about his car. After Lily, it was the love of his life. I drove it home from his deathbed, because it was there, because it was Lily’s inheritance, and because I was in Chicago with nothing to drive. But the next morning I woke up and the battery was dead. I was stunned. I look for meaning in things. “Pay attention to the car,” was the message in that moment. “Be aware" was the real message. It wasn't about the car itself.

Ten steps away was an auto shop, and Barrett's car was running again within ten minutes. It was fairly painless. I had left the lights on the night before, because I was distraught from his death and not used to that car, but more than that, because I needed to pay attention…to the car. A moment of gratitude every time I get into the car was what I thought he was indicating, but I’m now seeing that there was more. Much more.

If I had been in love with him when he’d died, I’d be questioning all this. I’d be thinking that my extreme love was causing me wishful thinking, causing me to see “signs” where there were none. Causing me to seek comfort, because of the love we shared. But no. I didn't even like him much. The truth is, I love him more now that he’s dead than I have in the last 18 years. Because he’s not dead. How amazing to know, really know, that the spiritual world is real, that it is alive! It is amusing and ironic that so much of my spiritual communication now takes place in and around his car; how mundane, and at the same time symbolic. But we have a car history together. It was a shared interest.

I couldn’t find the second key anywhere. I still can’t. The idea of losing the one remaining key sounded tragic enough that I was impelled to order a new one, which is no small expense. From his receipts, it appeared that his car was due for an oil change anyway, so I made an appointment with a VW dealership. There’s one right downtown, 3.7 miles from where we live. But no.

“Go to Jennings!” my intuition said, inexplicably. I sighed. I had no idea why my intuition wanted to make me drive to the suburbs instead of downtown, but when it came time to pay, “It’s half-off today!” the cashier said…inexplicably, making the extra drive much more palatable. And then, looking into the files, “Oh I see you have a credit.” I’d never been there in my life. Barrett’s car had a credit. So the oil change was free.  My intuition was now validated. When my car drove up, I discovered that there was a bit of an issue with the trunk. Somehow the trunk was now set to open every time I unlocked the car. I didn’t have time to stay for the diagnostics, and said let’s fix it when I came back to pick up the new spare key, in a few days.

More consciousness around the car. My daughter urged me to transform this minor irritation into a cause for laughter, every time the trunk unnecessarily opened, which was several times a day. So now, gratitude that the engine started when I turned the key, and laughter upon unlocking and unnecessary trunk popping.

“What's up?” the car asked, each time I unlocked it.

We returned to Jennings VW together, Lily and I, due to her affection for her dad’s car, which by that time we had named Johnny, for reasons that amuse us and involve port-a-pottys. We thought the unlocking issue and key pickup would take 20 minutes.  So after the first hour we went to investigate the delay.

“Just wondering what’s going on…” I said in my fake-friendliest way. “We don’t actually know!” they said. I stared at them, the friendly group of VW service people.

“You know when your computer does something weird and you don’t know why? It’s kind of like that,” one of them said helpfully.

In light of that mystery, they had no idea how much longer it would take. They assured me I wouldn’t be paying for labor.  Lily and I turned to leave. There was a wide, flat computer screen on the wall before us, meant for the service staff only, with names of car owners scrolling down slowly, and just then, right before our eyes the screen read BARRETT FISKE. My daughter gasped.

Back in our waiting room chairs, before we went back to our little phone screens, something occurred to me: “When did you last talk to your dad?” And by talk, I meant…engage in communication with a dead person. Yes. We do that now.

“Well, it’s been…well, ever since that woman told me to say his name out loud, I haven’t.”

“We are inexplicably and indefinitely locked out of your dad’s car and we just saw his name flash before our eyes. I think he’s trying to get your attention.” Lily shut her eyes for a long moment.

“Ok, I said hi to him and apologized for not talking to him lately, and I said please make the next person who comes through that door be the person who tells us our car is ready.”

The door opened. Right then. It had been happening all morning…but never for our car.

“Your car is ready.”

“Thank you Daddy!”

His car drove up with a placard on top with the number 1134. Eleven is half of my special number, 1111, the number that says to me all is right with my world. And seven is Lily’s. A 3 and a 4 suffice just fine for a seven. We got in. The odometer was at 1111. Maybe this was not as stunning as the time when my odometer was at 1111 and the time was 1:11 and I put quarters in the meter and was given 1:11, but all was, indeed, right with the world.

We were starving. We decided to settle for mall food, because it was close, and because it was where Lily always went with her dad.

“$7.77,” the cashier said to Lily, handing her the number to put on our table: 7.  We place great stock in numbers. They tell us that we’re in the right place at the right time. (The sacred number 108 was on a Cubs ticket (seat 108, are you kidding me?) that we found on the ground right outside our front gate weeks later, with a price of $48—our dear friend’s favorite number; the ticket was actually near her front door. We care about these things. We like when the Universe says hi to us, in a language we understand.

So we were thrilled with our sevens.

I must interrupt myself to say, with all due reverence for the deceased, that Barrett had been obsessed with a tv show. In his world, obsession meant not just that he watched all the episodes. It meant that he read the book the show was based on—that book was actually in his car when he died. He had looked into the author’s life. He had studied the particular dysfunction of the main character of the show “Dexter.” He was a very smart guy and he knew way more about this tv show than anyone actually needed to know. 

Lily and I found it amusing, his passion for all things Dexter. It was our private joke, and when I was in Chicago and she wasn’t,  I would send her one-word texts which meant I’m with your dad right now and guess what he’s talking about: “Dexter.”

Laden with plates of noodles, our waiter looks for table number seven, and I look up at our waiter and see his name tag:

DEXTER.

Barrett is so not dead.

Anyway...where was I? Right! At the DMV:

<go to Part 2!>