“Where do we go after we die?” Tim asked me.

Nobody knows. I don’t know. But I responded anyway. I said that I don’t think anything truly ends-it just changes. So when a person dies they just go somewhere else. Their body goes into the earth. Their breath diffuses into the air. The vibrations of their voice echo through the living, held in our bodies and transmitted through our own voices whether we realize it or not.

Living with a dead parent feels more and more like a conversation. Chris keeps visiting me since we moved to D.C. two years ago. I’m trying to make sense of it.

Thanksgiving 2019.

The first Thanksgiving we celebrated at our new apartment. I cooked for two days and was beyond exhausted at the end of dinner. I pardoned myself and went to the bedroom early, around 9:00. As I lay in bed, I put on Alice’s Restaurant and listened as the familiar acoustic guitar filled the room. I felt a wash of orange as the song played, and dad was right there. I’d never felt him like that before, his presence so obvious and clear. The feeling of being together in a room. I cried and texted my brother the song but never got a reply.

May 23rd, 2020.

Exactly 11 years after he died. I still don’t know the day he died by heart. It’s still too painful. I was feeling off all day, and not the kind of routine “off” that is easily brushed aside as the side effect of a bad sandwich or upsetting news story. It was a preoccupied “off” without any specific content. Tim was going through our stacks of memory boxes where we keep ephemera from years past. He only does this rarely and when he does it’s usually just a cursory flip-through. But he came out of the room holding dad’s funeral program. The date: May 23rd, 2009. The next day my cousin posted a photo to his instagram in memory of his father, who died a year to the day after Chris. Over his shoulder in the reflection of a window was the image of my father, the one taking the photo.

September 30, 2020.

Sleepy in bed. In a forceful almost pleading tone my inner monologue said, “Chris is here. He’s here now.” I felt the same presence I did on Thanksgiving. The room was somehow filled with my father. I fell asleep. The next morning I saw my cousin Sarah posted a song lyric from Sufjan Stevens’ album Carrie and Lowell, which I listened to obsessively after dad died. The album and his death are inseparable to me and I eventually stopped listening to it for that reason. The quote was “Your apparition passes through me in the willows”. In her caption she included #dad, #thinkingofyou, #sad, and #grief.

Why is this happening now? Does he know that I need to face him? Are his bones tired? Does he need to go somewhere else? Is he coming on my behalf or his?

Tim said that maybe he’s ready to be buried.

I think he’s right. But I’m scared of not doing it right. I’m scared of an end. I’m scared of what I’ll find in myself. I’m scared of holding his bones between my fingers. I’m scared. But I’m almost ready.