Dead Ex-tra

I made contact with Dead Ex’s sister.  No, not that way---the way everybody does it these days, via Facebook.  I’ll probably never know why it took her six months to respond to my simple query---obviously she isn’t as addicted to social media as the rest of us.  Or perhaps the simple question ‘are you Rob’s sister?’ froze her for awhile.  I doubt it, though---there’s a hunger there, starting with the present tense of her reply: “Yes, I am.  How do you know him?”

Oh, let me count the ways.  I know him by the punched in plaster on the wall into the kitchen.  I know him by forgetting he always took his aspirin dry and the resulting glass of water flung across the bathroom floor.  I know him by his suggestion that I take up with the young blond who had a crush on me.  I know him as the first man to have me totally, and you don’t forget that.  And I won’t ever forget the thin blue January morn he appeared in the passenger seat of my speeding car to apologize.

She didn’t flinch at my surreal story, she only wanted more.  What did he look like?  What else did he say?  I tried to collect up suitable situations to share, but everything seemed a bit too personal and irrelevant to her.  When he comes up behind me from the right, he takes my breath away---just like the first time.  He doesn’t wear clothes anymore, he’s naked.  Wait, he was wearing clothes the first time he appeared---and so I describe them to her: the warm gray sweater vest, the white long-sleeved pinpoint oxford shirt with the pinstripe plaid pattern.  Suddenly I can recall each article as I pulled them from the washer at the Laundromat---ironed them, hung them, folded them---twenty two years ago.

Dead Ex died in a single occupancy hotel in The City.  These were nothing new to him.  We started our first days in one, unbeknownst to the landlord---sharing a twin bed, the feeble light from the window that looked out onto a brick wall and the toilet for all down the hall.  Quite a departure for this young man raised in suburbia.   The City had been shaken down by the Loma Prieta earthquake just a couple of months before; it was quiet and slightly emptied that January.  It was easy for me to find us a nice sunny little studio at a decent price---a studio that would soon have the wall with the punched in plaster.

The news that his last days were lived in a similar place matched a death scene that had been given to me months before.  She made no report that jived with the visual dramatics I’d seen in that room, though.  The coroner wouldn’t let her view his body due to decomposition.  This gave me a lead into the details I saw, though:  There was blood on the edge of the bed and on the floor, darkened with age.  I certainly didn’t offer this information to her---I may never know the time when it’ll be appropriate to do so.

My husband was going over my responses to her latest email.  I asked him to, least the various pressures put upon me were causing me to write inappropriately.  After all, Dead Ex died from alcoholism and my husband is an alcohol/drug rehab therapist.  At one point I responded that her report of where he died matched closely to a visual I had been given.

“I’m suddenly recalling the blood you saw,” my husband said.  “I hadn’t thought of it before, but you know, it’s likely he died from a ruptured esophagus.  It’s fairly common with chronic alcoholics from vomiting so much.  He would vomit a quantity of blood as that happened.”

I stopped pacing and felt energy shoot down my legs and into the floor.  I heard Dead Ex say your old man’s right on.  He seemed pleased we got it.

“This rupture would not be visible on his body, though, would it?” I asked.

“No.”

“So the visual of his wounded chest remains symbolic.  He was only giving me an interior view of what happened.”

My husband nodded as I went back to that scene.  Not of the room where Dead Ex died, but another time, in the living room of a friend I do spiritual work with.  It was much like the first time in the car, when the setting is very ordinary and real and then the dead appear in our midst.  He was clothed in the same manner.  He walked in, turned to me and ripped open his sweater vest.  Next he tore open his shirt, buttons popping.  His broad chest look like an explosion took place.  I thought he had committed suicide with a large caliber revolver.  After all, he died three days after my friend hanged himself, and Dead Ex had once owned such a pistol.  He had hocked it by the time we came together, but he still had the bullets.

“Does this scare you?” he asked me.

“No.”  I wasn’t scared, I was in awe.

“I didn’t think it would.”  He stepped closer.  “Touch it.”

I made no move to.  It wasn’t repulsive, but it seemed very alive---raw and forbidden.

“Go ahead, touch it.”

I slowly reached out.  I was aware of my friend watching me reaching out into thin air, but my fingertips touched flesh, wet and warm.  I shivered.  It was as sensual as any other spiritual meeting with him.

“You can do anything,” he said.