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!>