Happy Birthday to Me

"I'll be holding your hand"

Photo by Vitaly K. on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

I’ve never been big on birthdays. Besides that overcooked rhetoric of having one less year to live, which I might as well embrace, I just never saw the point of celebrating. Sure, I was born. Also, sure, I’m still around. Shouldn’t this be enough, you may ask? And you’d have a point, especially on the still being around bit. And we’d argue. But, after careful consideration (I’ve always wanted to insert ‘after careful consideration’ somewhere in a piece of writing), I’d stick to my guns. God forbid I draw too much attention to the ‘still being around’ part, only to be incinerated by lightning the next second.  

Plus, on August sixth everyone’s on vacation, and I remember Mom having a hard time lining up a bunch of kids to throw me a party, back in the day. As discouraging as that was, I took it as a sign from the Universe: you shouldn’t celebrate, these things ain’t for you. And it (the Universe) was right. It’s been right all along: I’m not a celebration guy, guest availability or not. 

My August sixths have mostly been uneventfully spent, waiting around for time to pass quickly. Occasionally, I’d dine with family, but I don’t need to turn any number of years to do that. Anyway, that’s how I’m wired, and I believe it has something to do with my not wanting to disturb, create inconvenience, or be in the way, under the unconvincing conviction that attracting the spotlight and being the center of attention actually does that. Honestly, I don’t have any recollection of a particular August sixth, one that’s unforgettable, memorable, indelible, sculpted on the marble walls of my memory. I’ve forgotten them all, as they were all -- by design -- easy to forget.  

Until yesterday, this year’s August sixth, when, sitting at the desk in what used to be Dad’s study at our old family house, I was trying to write this piece. 

Dad’s study is much cleaner now than when he was around. He used to shut himself in there for hours, buried under paperwork, among piles of documents that hadn’t been touched in ages, shutters closed to natural light. It was hard to convince him the room needed to be aired and cleaned, and when he conceded, it was always after a long and wearying negotiation. In his final years, he treated his clunky notebook computer as if it were fixed (and, in all honesty, it was as bulky as a fixed one; one of those ancient portable models weighing as much as a load of bricks). He kept it there, on the desk, stationary, connected to the external world through a thick ethernet cable, and never took it anywhere else. He didn’t trust wi-fi. 

Right after Dad passed, in the middle of the covid shutdown, we all spent weeks at the house, and one of the activities that helped our grieving and kept us busy and relatively far from insanity was cleaning his study. We had to go through all the papers and documents anyway (including the content of his ancient portable computer, which we tackled at a later time), so we thought we might as well embark on the grand project of transforming the study into a normal, livable room again. Sorting through all the paper was also a way to feel connected to him, to keep him close. When a family member passes, one wants to hear stories about them, read their writings, handle their belongings, smell their clothes. During those few weeks of shutdown, Mom and us three siblings did exactly that: we spent hours every day in the study reading, understanding, discovering, filing, and discarting. Until a mountain of trash paper piled up in a corner of the room, waiting to be disposed of. We burned it in the backyard while standing there, all four of us in front of the flames, watching it go up in smoke. It was a little sad, but necessary.

And so when yesterday, August sixth, I was writing at Dad’s old desk, I didn’t notice a presence in the room. My eyes were fixed on the computer screen, my head was on something else, and the cicadas outside were making their white noise. Plus, since when can one hear a phantasm walk or move?

Now, at this point, in many stories, the author ventures into a detailed description of what they are seeing, in order to convince themselves and dispel any doubt that they are facing a real ghost. They might then write that the being or creature in front of them has a milky, whitish, semi-transparent consistency, or that it moves without walking, simply through instant shifts or by disappearing and reappearing. Or that it passes through walls. All of this to justify and convey that they are, in fact, facing a ghost. 

There was no doubt that the entity entering Dad's old study last night was a ghost. Because it was him. It was Dad. And he passed away four years ago. And I saw him in the casket. And we have his ashes. Etcetera. He didn’t have any of the typical ghost qualities. He wasn’t semi-transparent, or whitish, and moved like a regular living person. He might have passed through walls to get there, but I didn’t see that because, when I looked up from my computer screen, he was already there, standing in the doorway, looking at me. 

He smiled a serene smile, his lips closed. Happy Birthday, son, he said in a calm voice, walking toward the desk, his eyes fixed on me. He sat in one of the two leather chairs in front of the desk, the ones he kept there for the guests he rarely allowed in the study. We had reversed roles so many times, it occurred to me: him seated behind his desk and me seated in one of the guest leather chairs. For the first time, now it was the opposite of what it had always been. He wore his usual summer clothes: beige linen pants with the cuffs rolled up at the ankles, a white t-shirt, and, over it, an untucked blue and white checkered shirt. His appearance was as it had been about twenty years before he passed, when his hair was still almost all black. 

I didn't know which of the myriad emotions coursing through me to prioritize. I didn’t know what to say. What I did know was that I wasn’t afraid. Can I touch you?, I finally asked. Without a word, he extended his hand to me across the desk, palm facing up. It was Dad’s hand, no one else’s. I could recognize the reassuring softness and warmth of his palm blindfolded. He was real, in the flesh. Yet, the ghost of a dead human. We held hands, I felt secure. I wanted to say how much I miss him, every day. I wanted to say so much, about so many things. No need to speak, he said, as if knowing. 

You know, he said, you can read all the books in the world, listen to all the advice, follow all the great minds, but you’ll learn only when things happen to you. Life lessons will manifest when they are needed. All you necessitate to learn is within you. Once you have learned a lesson, the next one will come. If you are alive, it means there are still lessons to learn.

I can do nothing to protect you, or make sure things go your way. But I’ll be holding your hand.  

He released my hand, stood, and slowly headed back toward the door. He turned around one last time, smiled, and said By the way, great job cleaning this place up; it looks nice. Are you sure all the papers you burned were unnecessary? He then walked out of the room. Dad, wait! I cried aloud, and ran to the door. Outside the room, silence and darkness enveloped everything. I was the only one in the house, all the lights were off.

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