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!>