by Philip Smith
“Oh. I thought an autopsy could find anything.”
“Nope, only certain key drugs. Sorry.” He stood to leave.
What a dumb fuck. He lied to me, and I believed him. He was just too lazy and didn’t want to bother to fill out the paperwork to do the job. I should have known better than to assume that this $16,000-a-year detective knew anything about medicine, much less pharmaceuticals. I was still a kid in many ways and didn’t know how to push my way through the system.
Many years later, I told this story to a brilliant pathologist friend of mine, who said, “Of course Synthroid would show up in an autopsy. You can find anything if you bother to look for it.”
No one was helping me. I was wasting my time with the police and decided to head back home. As I drove up to the house, there were even more people waiting outside wanting to know when I was going to be raising my father from the dead. It was unbearably hot for December, and I could hardly breathe. I felt as if I were underwater and very close to drowning. Over the next several hours, the doorbell continued to ring. People stopped by to tell me that they just heard this terrible rumor that my father is dead and it just isn’t true, is it? The bell rang again. I opened the door.
“Well, hey there, Philip.” I was looking at a slightly disheveled but overly perky southern blonde with a thick accent and a beaming, wide-mouthed smile. I recognized her but couldn’t remember her name. She had been at the house many times before. Her claim to fame was that she had a bit part on a TV sitcom from my childhood, Car 54, Where Are You?
“Someone told me that your daddy was dead.” She broke out laughing, slapping her thighs. “Why, I never heard anything so silly in my entire life. Fact is, I just saw him up at the Winn-Dixie supermarket buying those Stella D’Oro cookies he likes so much. So I just wanted to stop by and say hey. Now, you give a big kiss to your daddy when he gets home. Hear? Bye now!”
Others would stop by with similar stories. In the twenty-four hours after he died, my father’s various appearances hovered somewhere between Christ rising on Easter morning and numerous Elvis sightings. Aside from these few witnesses of resurrection and eternal life, my father’s death brought out scores of mourners dropping by or calling to tell stories of how he had saved their lives. Tears filled their eyes as they related their rescue from terminal diseases and emotional distress. These were astonishing moments, as I listened to the endless miracles he performed.
During the last several years, I had been so caught up in my own life, as well as my father’s magical mystery tour, that I had not communicated that often with my mother. I called her to let her know that my father had died. This was the cue she had been waiting for to reenter my life. She took a deep sigh and asked how she could help. I just started crying. With my father gone, she felt she could now reclaim her right as my parent, which over the years had been usurped by him and his various spirits.
Days went by, and still I could not locate my father’s body. No one knew where it was. I called the hospital; someone there said that he was never admitted, since he died on the way, in the ambulance. Lisa was not helpful. She couldn’t remember where the ambulance took him. After calling all over town, I finally located my father at the hospital morgue. Apparently, one arm of the hospital doesn’t speak to the other. I asked if I could stop by and take one last look. The nurse told me, “Trust me, honey, you don’t want to take a look at that body.” I wondered what that meant, and my paranoia began generating ideas of how he had been stabbed and cut up by Lisa or used as an anatomy lesson for residents.
“Just tell us what to do with him.” When she said this, it reminded me how all of this was just a terrible mistake and that he wasn’t supposed to be dead. Besides, I had no idea what to do with him. I had never visited a local cemetery in Miami. I didn’t know who to call.
After that phone call, I figured I’d better get a jump on things and begin casket shopping. As much as I enjoyed shopping, picking out a casket is truly one of the most horrific and unaesthetic activities in existence. I made the assumption that my father would like to be buried in a plain wooden box. Nice and simple. The salesmen looked at me with disbelief when I asked if they had any plain pinewood caskets. No such thing. One went so far as to respond, “You’re joking?”
Every “showroom” I entered had hideous shiny metal boxes with upholstered red or baby blue velvet that made them look like pimp Cadillacs for the dead. I was shopping for a casket as I would a nice suit—simple lines, nice fit, understated color, nothing too flashy. It should be so easy not to be buried in bad taste. I made a mental note that when I got back to New York to call Calvin Klein about coming out with a line of designer caskets—something simple in elegant monochromes such as dove gray and tarragon—appropriate for traveling to the next world in style. If the Egyptians figured out how to design for death, why couldn’t we? After two days of looking, I still could not find a plain wooden casket and was contemplating making it myself with a few sheets of plywood, nails, and a handsaw. At this point, all I wanted was something simple, elegant, and comfy.
While I continued to mentally design the best possible casket, I decided to begin packing up Pop’s office. Too many people were coming by asking for mementos, and I didn’t want anything disappearing. I was also concerned that as word of his death spread, the authorities might show up with a subpoena in order to claim his papers.
As I started cleaning off his desk, I accidentally leaned on what I thought was just the side of a cabinet. It was actually a false panel that gave way and revealed a hidden, small safelike area with black metal boxes filled with various legal papers and recent diaries. I opened the one marked “1981” and noticed two small but very telling entries. The first, dated July 24, 1981, stated simply, “I received mastership today 1,500,000.” Less than a month later, on August 18, 1981, a second entry stated, “I reached the disciple level today. Vib. 2,000,000. Work with high spirits.” These strange notations indicated that just a few months before his death, the spirits were moving him up the ranks very quickly. Clearly, something was up. In the yogic traditions, when someone reaches ascended masterships, he can leave the body at will. He acquires unusual powers that rival those of comic-book superheroes, such as levitation, being in two places at once, and the ability to materialize whatever one thinks about. For these masters there is very little difference between life and death, as the body becomes less important. Reading these entries made me think that my father’s recent death was due to him being transferred for service in another dimension.
Also in this cabinet was a copy of his will. I didn’t even know he had one. Seeing his signature on his last will and testament was unsettling. It was as if he had signed his own death warrant. His instructions were simple: he requested to be cremated. Burning his body made me uncomfortable; it seemed so brutal, but at least it eliminated the problem of an ugly coffin.
As I was reading the will, the phone rang. Barton Johns, a longtime friend of my father, called to inquire if I’d “heard” from him. Barton expressed his surprise and disappointment that there had been no clairvoyant message from my father announcing that he had reached the other side. As he said this, it made me feel inadequate as a son and as a son of a psychic—I couldn’t even pick up the signals emanating from my dead father. In my defense, I mentioned to Barton that it takes a period of time for the dead to transition to their new situation of being without a body. They have to learn how to navigate in their new etherlike environment. Once they settle in, they eventually figure out how to communicate with the folks back on earth. Plus, I was in such a state of shock, I was not in any condition to receive a Western Union from the next world.
To change the topic away from my failure as a junior psychic, I mentioned that I had finally found my father’s will and his wish for cremation. Barton became very excited, as if telling me about a white sale at Macy’s. “Yeah, we’ve checked it out. We want to be cremated too. Buena Vista, only $299 for everything. This is the way to go.” Bar
ton would know. He was an engineer who claimed to have developed a long-standing relationship with a group of aliens whom he hung out with whenever they visited planet Earth. No matter what time of day or the circumstances, almost every other sentence out of his mouth started with, “When I was on the mother ship…” Barton said that he had witnessed all of the alien advanced technology used for healing the sick. Once prodded, he would describe in exacting detail the aliens’ astounding abilities to rejuvenate organs, repair wounds, and create new body parts. He felt that my father’s techniques for healing were far simpler than theirs but similar in that they both harnessed the power of invisible energies. Barton was confident that my father learned all his healing methods after having been abducted by aliens, put to sleep on the mother ship, and having had a chip implanted in his brain.
After our conversation, I began to worry about how the cremation people would know which were my father’s ashes or someone else’s. At $299, I seriously doubted that they would properly separate the different bodies to provide individualized service. I assumed they waited until they had a critical mass of bodies, dumped ’em in the oven, and gave you back the dust of that day’s body burnings all mixed together. Or they probably made more money by dumping the body in a landfill out by the airport, then went to the quarry, smashed up some rock, handed it to you in a plastic bag, and said, “Here’s your wife, Mr. Fester.”
Based on Barton’s enthusiastic recommendation, I had Pop booked into the nearest Buena Vista for his cremation. Since I did not witness the delivery of the body or the cremation, who knows what they did. Two days later a cardboard box arrived containing the “remains” in a plastic Baggie tied with a twist. These days I’m sure they’ve graduated to the added convenience of Ziploc so that nothing can leak out. As I looked at the bits and pieces of gray and white chunks in the bag, I thought about his whole life reduced to just a handful of dust. His brains, his eyes, his teeth, his laugh, his hands—all concentrated in a bag filled with what looked like gray bread crumbs.
I called Buena Vista and asked what I was supposed to do with the bag. They suggested I come on down to their showroom to select one of their “memory vases” to store the ashes. This seemed like a practical idea. Unfortunately, the urns looked like the kind of vases that you see in hospital rooms with those ordinary flower arrangements of a few carnations and a tired yellow chrysanthemum. Thoughtless and beyond depressing. If I wasn’t going to bury him in an ugly coffin, I certainly wasn’t going to pour his ashes into something that looked like it came from Sandi’s Flower Shoppe. I thought maybe Pop had an old jar of olives lying around that I could rinse out and put his ashes into.
The solution for his ashes’ final resting place came years later, during one of my visits to India. On this particular trip, I was a guest of the Indian government, which had wanted me to write an article on Bollywood, which at the time was largely unknown in America. The government had arranged a special visit to the Taj Mahal during a full moon. This was an unusual honor, as it required special governmental clearances. My guide was excited that I was going to have this privileged experience. As we approached the mausoleum, he turned to me and said, “The Taj at full moon; you will have a very special dream tonight.”
There were only about ten of us on the grounds. The immaculate white edifice glowed in the moonlight. I was running a bit of a fever, and the guide said, “You need gin to cool the body. There are many herbs in gin that will make you better.” At the time, I didn’t drink, as Barton Johns had warned me that the space people said that humans should never consume alcohol because it destroys brain cells. After years of youthful indiscretion, I was working hard to keep my brain intact. However, the idea of something naturally medicinal was alluring. After my first gin and tonic, I headed for bed.
That night, as the guide predicted, I had a memorable dream. In it, the phone rang. It was my father calling. “I just want you to know I’m okay; I have a lot of new friends and am keeping busy. Everything is okay here.” Click. When I remember dreams with great clarity, it is because they are important and need to be paid attention to. The dream was extremely comforting. I had no doubt that it had been a direct message from my father.
The next morning, my guide took me back to the Taj for a final tour. Seeing the Taj in the daylight was less magical but even more impressive. As I studied the detailed inlay work throughout the building, I was told that the descendants of the original craftsmen still practice these intricate design and inlay skills inherited from their forefathers. We drove out to the small town and met a man who represented a group of workers. I explained that I needed to make a container for my father’s ashes. Several of his men followed me back to the Taj. There we copied floral and geometric patterns that I wanted reproduced on the urn in semiprecious stones. On a piece of paper, I drew the overall design for the box. It would be a vertical rectangle of the same pristine white marble used throughout the Taj.
Even though Pop’s body had been cremated and an obituary published in the newspaper, I continued to receive calls and letters from people asking to be healed. I needed to provide some sort of final notice that my father no longer lived on planet Earth. A memorial service seemed to be the answer. I called the synagogue where I had been bar mitzvahed to see if the current rabbi would be able to officiate at his memorial. I didn’t know the guy, but I figured that there would be some consideration for someone who had such a long history with the synagogue. While talking to me, he checked his schedule over the next several days and found that his calendar was filled. “Let’s see, I have golf with the Bernsteins on Tuesday, Wednesday the Hadassah lunch, and I’m playing tennis in the afternoon with my wife…So how about next Wednesday at four—wait, no, no, I have something penciled in. Could you call me back in a couple of weeks and see how I’m doing?” I told him never mind; I would conduct the service myself.
Fortunately the Church of Religious Science agreed to host a memorial service. Pop had been a key figure at the church, holding a weekly healing circle that saved a lot of people from medication and surgery. The pastor let me know that they would give me the hall for free, but I would have to pay for the organist. Apparently a free hall for a memorial was an extremely generous gift. I was continually shocked at how much everything costs when you die. I guess I thought that people would feel sorry for you and pick up the tab for everything.
I spoke with the organist and asked her to sing “On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever),” from the Barbra Streisand movie in which she plays a nutty broad with psychic powers. My father loved that movie because it was one of the few times that someone with ESP was portrayed in a film. In my grief, I imagined my father hovering above us, having clear days and seeing everything, everywhere. The organist said no and insisted that she play the theme from The Rose. The Rose? What did that have to do with my father? I tried to negotiate.
“Okay, how about ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’?”
“I want to play ‘The Rose.’ It was your father’s favorite song.”
“It was? Well, okay.”
After her serenade, I ascended to the pulpit. Hundreds of people were there. All eyes were filled with unspeakable loss. I looked around the hall. Many people were wearing his white healing beads or holding a pendulum or some other artifact that he had given them. They looked to me with the hope that I would tell them something that would make their pain go away, something that would replace my father in their eyes. Here was a group of people that had come in contact with a man like no other. His disappearance from the physical world was unthinkable and, for many, unbearable.
I struggled to hold back the tears and began, “Very few people, including myself, fully understood what my father did. To cure fatal disease or heal mental illness just through thought and invisible energy seems incomprehensible. According to the world of science and medicine, what he did on a daily basis was not possible. Ask any doctor, and he will quickly tell you that no human can wave their hands, close their eyes, and d
issolve a cataract or repair a punctured lung. If, during his life, my father had simply cured just one person of cancer, that alone would have been a miracle. But the fact that he did this day after day was an extraordinary achievement.
“In cooperation with unseen spirits from another dimension, my father devoted his life to creating the future of medicine. He struggled against official ignorance and prejudice in the hope that he could show doctors a safer and more effective way to treat disease. We may not even begin to understand what he did until the next century. But hopefully, one day medicine will move beyond treating symptoms with chemical poisons that may heal one part of the body while killing another or surgically treating the body like a broken plumbing system. When my father healed, he addressed the intelligence and the miracle of the body. He was able to cure when pills wouldn’t and surgery couldn’t, in ways that seemed strange and simplistic yet achieved remarkable results.”
I hoped my father was listening to how proud I was of his extraordinary accomplishments. “Once my father perfected his own healing methods, he sought to teach everyone that they too can heal. He never felt that he was in any way different or better than anyone else because of his abilities. His goal was to awaken the innate healing power in as many people as possible in order to improve human consciousness and help us all understand the living miracle that we all are. This healing power is within all of us. I know that he would want his work to live on and continue to bring health and end suffering whenever, wherever possible.”
Afterward, at a small reception, people were smiling and laughing. The sound hurt my ears. My mother had joined me at the memorial for moral support. I was grateful for her being there. She had not lost her passion for social intrigue, though, and asked me in a loud whisper, “Which one is his girlfriend?”