Today, August 18, is Michael’s and my thirty-third anniversary … and my second without him because he died suddenly (but naturally) less than a month before our thirty-second.
In One Year Without, I hinted at a recent experience that felt like a special gift delivered from Michael on the eve of his deathday.
After a friend recently sent me Come Back to Me As Lightning, I replied:
“In the past, I might have dismissed stories like this as people reading into coincidences what they want to see, but after the cascade of synchronicities I’ve experienced over the past year, I realize these are messages of such lightning-bolt specificity, their significance cannot be denied.”
I shared some of those synchronicities in Wingèd Messengers and the follow-up that piece inspired.
The opening lines of Michael’s latest missive of lightning-bolt specificity arrived on May 31, when Spotify sent me an email announcing that Deltron 3030 was embarking on a twenty-fifth anniversary tour for their eponymous debut during which Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala would be performing the album in full.
I’ve received hundreds of such emails about other concerts over the years and have deleted all without a second’s thought.
This one was different, though. For the first time in my life, I found myself tempted. For this to mean anything to anyone, you’ll need to know I’ve never been to a concert in my life—well, one, but it was when I was a baby, so I don’t remember it, although it is significant because it was a Moody Blues concert, which is how my parents first met. (For most of my life, I thought I’d also been to a Beach Boys concert, but when I asked my mom about it a few years ago, she said no, so I think it must’ve been a cover band at a local fair (which scarcely counts as a concert), and I was too young to tell the difference.)
This wasn’t just a band I liked doing a regular old concert. This was Michael’s and my favorite hiphop/rap creative collaboration reuniting to perform a concept album so Apocaloptimistically in sync with my own work that I dedicated a section to it titled Global Controls Will Have to Be Imposed in my third essay, Dr. Mengelfauci: Pinocchio, Puppeteer, or Both?, over four years ago.
The description of the album at Dan the Automator’s website reads:
“Set in the year 3030 (of course), Deltron 3030 is a dystopian rap opera scored by Nakamura’s brilliant amalgam of dark, lush string arrangements, thunderous drums, and spaced-out synths. Backed by these suites, Del the Funky Homosapien became Deltron, an aggrieved activist penning anti-capitalist screeds with the same fervor as the unnamed protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Released to widespread critical acclaim, the album remains a vivid and arresting epic unlike any the genre has produced. It is perhaps the closest rap will ever come to Orwell’s 1984.”
When 2020 hit, Deltron 3030 instantly came to mind. It appeared their predictions were coming true a thousand years ahead of time.
Deltron sets the scene in the introductory song, 3030:
Use my rapping so you all can see the hazards
Plus entertainment where many are brainless
We cultivated a lost art of study and I brought a buddy
Automator, harder slayer, fascinating combinations
Cyber warlords are aggravating abominations
Arm a nation with hatred? We ain’t with that …
I had to step forward, tell them this ain’t for us
Living in a post-apocalyptic world, morbid and horrid
The secrets of the past they hoarded …
They can’t fight the force
Victory is ours once we strike the source …
It’s an eternal evil concerned with thievery
Medieval prehistoric rhetoric well we ahead of that …
I insert these codes for the cataclysm
Ever since I had the vision use my magnetism
In this modern metropolis that tries to lock us up
Under preposterous laws, it’s not for us
Deltron’s Apocaloptimism shines through in Positive Contact as he tells us he will be exploring “The darkest side of humanity animated / The grand awakening, plan to take it in.”
In Turbulence, Del observes:
They changed the constitution for your red white and blue friends
Exterminate nuisance, no one listens to what you said
The online is touching your head
With brainwashing, with propaganda about your fearless leader
Who got two hundred bodyguards so you can’t touch him either …
Elitists defeat us, they live by the beaches
Bubble-dome over the hemisphere, so you can’t enter here …
Scratch your ID chip off ’cause everybody own it …
No president, we have a ruler …
Senior citizens are disposed against their wishes
Virus opens with a sample from Robin Armstrong’s spoken-word album Nuclear War 1984?:
“Global controls will have to be imposed
And a world-governing body
will be created to enforce them
Crises precipitate change”
[diabolical laughter]
Secretly … plotting your demise
Evidently, I wasn’t the only one who found parallels between 2020 and 3030. This mashup was published on October 4, 2020:
Contrary to what some might assume, the virus referenced in the lyrics isn’t a contagious illness. Rather, it represents an act of creative resistance against “Corrupt politicians with leaders and their keywords / FBI and spies stealin’ bombs.” Deltron states:
I wanna devise a virus
To bring dire straits to your environment
Crush your corporations with a mild touch
Trash your whole computer system and revert you to papyrus
I want to make a super virus
Strong enough to cause blackouts in every single metropolis
Cause they don’t wanna unify us
So f*ck it total anarchy and can’t nobody stop us
In other words, Deltron is leading the revolution against technocracy through creativity and imagination, a mission I share.
Deltron elucidates this strategy in Things You Can Do:
Impenetrable, incontestable indigestible
Intelligence, never let a computer tell me shit
It’s rapping innovation, penetrating
Artificial life forms, who bite songs …
The area of distribution, lifts the clueless …
I magnetize the avid lies, my radiation shields
Reflect, rejects Decepticons
Who take the truth, and stretch it long, while I bless the song
Like Del, I am fulfilling my destiny by wielding words to topple technocratic tyranny. As Del raps in Time Keeps on Slipping:
I remake my universe every time I use a verse
To fulfill my destiny
Michael’s favorite television show was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. He often noted how Serling had brilliantly eluded censorship by using a fictional format to tell difficult truths. This PBS article on Serling explains:
“Fed up with the difficulties of writing about serious issues on the conservative networks, Serling turned to science fiction and fantasy. Through an ingenious mixture of morality fable and fantasy writing, he was able to circumvent the timidity and conservatism of the television networks and sponsors. Self-producing a series of vignettes that placed average people in extraordinary situations, Serling could investigate the moral and political questions of his time. He found that he could address controversial subjects if they were cloaked in a veil of fantasy.”
Del chose a similarly surprising medium for sociopolitical commentary: rap. Critical of the debased form of rap that dominates the industry, Del sought to elevate it to an art form, writing in Madness:
The universe is one and I can see what rap can be glorious
Put in the Smithsonian my podiums for holy hymns
This twenty-fifth anniversary performance felt like a Smithsonian exhibition of sorts. Out of curiosity, I checked the tour schedule. Portland was the only venue listed in Oregon.
I immediately put the idea out of my head as I am at the other end of the state, and I cannot be away from our kitties for more than twelve hours as I need to administer hyperthyroid medication to our senior kitty, Snoopy, every twelve hours. With so many Stoic challenges and kitty emergencies over the past year, I honestly feel anxious being away from the house for more than a couple hours at a time.
Plus, the Portland concert was on Michael’s deathday, and it felt far too irreverent to do something seemingly so frivolous on such a sober date.
I also didn’t have my driver’s license at the time and could only drive with a licensed adult accompanying me. This is one of the gazillion life hurdles I have had to conquer in the wake of losing Michael.
Although I got my driver’s license in high school, Michael and I always owned stick shifts. Being congenitally clumsy and directionally impaired (as will become evident later in this article), I found it too difficult to master that skill, so he did all the driving.
Around a dozen or so years ago, I went to the DMV to renew my driver’s license but was told I needed to bring my birth certificate to complete the process. At the time, my birth certificate was stuck in a file cabinet behind a fortress of boxes in our storage room. I got an extension and forgot about it for a while.
By the time I was able to access my birth certificate, the extension had expired, and I was told I would need to do both the written and driving tests before they would issue a new license.
Since I never drove, I didn’t bother. That meant I was stranded after Michael died.
I was too busy planning his funeral and sending out invites to deal with it, but I eventually took the written test and passed, no problem.
I felt relatively comfortable behind the wheel but had to coordinate with my mom and different friends when I needed to go anywhere or get practice driving.
Fortuitously, I was talking with a neighbor’s granddaughter when I learned she was a former driver’s ed instructor. She offered to give me lessons for free and leant me her instruction manual.
Over the next few months, we managed to do three of the six lessons, but both of us were so busy, it was nearly impossible to find time to work them in. I finally decided to do my driving test in late November and just hoped I would pass.
I didn’t. I nearly did, but then I stopped at a four-way intersection when I didn’t have a Stop sign, which was an immediate fail.
Several more months passed, and I tried to squeeze in a practice driving session here and there, but my instructor friend was too busy with kids and work to ever break free.
I finally felt confident enough to try again, so I scheduled my driving test with the same tester for Friday, June 27.
At the end of the drive, the tester said, “You clearly know what you’re doing.”
Wearing my INDE/PEND/ENCE shirt, I gratefully accepted my passing score. He said it would take a little time for it to get transferred to the DMV, though, so I planned to go on Monday.
I did, but it was less than an hour before it closed, and the clerk told me there was almost zero chance of me getting in. I took a number anyway and hoped.
As the numbers counted up, I sat on the edge of my seat with my fellow waiters, with one young man joking about us being in The Hunger Games. The atmosphere turned jovial, and even though they shut down the counters right before the young man’s number and about ten before mine, we went away in good spirits after laughing off our Stoic challenge.
It took me almost three weeks, but I finally carved out time to get back to the DMV—earlier this time! As I was sitting in the waiting room, I typed on my phone:
“Driving to the DMV to get my license after my first failed attempt when the DMV closed before they got to my number, I have the radio on because I haven’t yet figured out to play my own music. Halfway there, the DJ announces someone requested a solid block of Rush. As the first notes begin playing, my eyes moisten because Michael is the one who introduced me to Rush. I don’t even realize which song it is yet until suddenly it hits me … Red Barchetta. Now I’m fighting back the tears because I don’t want my mascara to run before my driver’s license picture. I pull into the parking lot and take an extra minute to listen to the song. I don’t want to miss my DMV window so reluctantly turn off the engine before the song finishes.
“I’m typing this on my phone while waiting for my number to be called, still fighting back the tears as I realize what a crystal-clear message that was from Michael. And now I must stop because my mascara won’t survive more typing.”
The day after I passed my driving test, the idea of the Deltron 3030 concert flickered through my mind again. I had already thought about the idea, rejected it, thought it about it again, and rejected it again dozens of times. Something about it just wouldn’t let me go, and now that I could drive on my own, I decided to look up the concert schedule again.
Portland was sold out. Phew! Now I don’t have to think about it anymore, I thought. But then I noticed Sacramento still had tickets. I checked the map and realized it was two hours closer. That might actually be doable.
I let myself consider it for a few minutes. Then I envisioned driving on the I-5 through Northern California and into the Bay Area, where Michael and I had once lived one deeply traumatizing year we described as the Inferno before ascending to Paradisio in Oregon. I could feel the PTSD coming on at the idea of driving through all that suffocating concrete and asphalt we had fled from decades ago and vowed to never return to.
So that was a clear no. Okay, good, now I can stop thinking about it again, I thought.
But I didn’t.
Then, shortly after midnight on the Fourth of July, Sane Francisco published this post.
One click led to another, and suddenly, I was retrieving my jaw from the floor after watching her supremely well-executed 50 Shades of Beige under her Single Beige Female nom de plume.
I immediately hopped onto Substack Chat to propose a collaboration. Just as I was about to type those words, I saw these words appear in her chat thread:
“MAA, happy 4th of July! Been meaning to reach out and see if you wanted to collab on a video sometime? Maybe you have some written words I could do something with?”
I replied:
“GTFO of my head!!!!! I was just about to hop on here and ask you exactly the same!!!!!”
She then said:
“Oh, wow, I just saw your comment. Blushing, thank you :)”
I had thought maybe it was my comment on her post that had prompted her to write me out of the blue to propose a collaboration after having only corresponded with me briefly a few times before, but no, she hadn’t even seen the comment until after suggesting that.
Synchronicity bells started clanging.
Having listened to her music, I thought maybe she would know Deltron 3030 and be interested in attending a concert in her vicinity. I sent her the link with the tour schedule and wrote:
“BTW, are you a Deltron 3030 fan? They[’re] doing a 25-year anniversary performance of their self-titled debut album, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. It will be absolutely epic, I’m sure. If I lived near one of these venues, I would be there in a heartbeat.”
Three minutes later, I wrote:
“OMG, I just noticed one of the performances is in Bend, OR! I missed that before! I might be able to swing that!”
Sometime between the last time I had checked the tours and this happenstance sharing with Sane Francisco, they’d added a concert in a smaller town I could feasibly drive to and still get back with plenty of time to take care of the kitties.
Eighteen minutes later, I texted one of my best friends, Rhonda, whom some of you may recall from the photo of us hugging at Michael’s service:
“I hope you’re awake and this doesn’t wake you up. Are you available on Sunday, July 20? I have a crazy idea, and I think you might be crazy enough to do it with me 😁”
Rhonda replied:
“Yes I’m up, in [her hometown] making potato salad for BBQ and plan on being home by then. Love crazy ideas...lol”
Then I said:
“OMG. I can’t believe I did this, but I just bought 2 tickets to Deltron 3030’s 25th anniversary performance of their self-titled debut album on July 20 in Bend.”
She replied:
“No, i have not heard of them. I don’t think I have any comments. I would love to help your dream come true.”
“Commitments...lol”
She later added:
“Always up for some fun with a good friend.”
So that was it. I’d done it. I was committed. I offered to do the three-hour drive there, and she would drive back.
As the date approached, I grew increasingly anxious. I have security cameras set up all around the house, so I comforted myself with knowing I could check the kitties and house remotely.
Still, I had trouble sleeping for days and suffered adrenal exhaustion, too tired to sleep and my nerves buzzing nonstop.
A week before the concert, I texted another friend I thought might be interested in joining us. He politely declined, saying it “sounds utterly exhausting lol.” I replied:
“I talked to Rhonda today, and I was like, ‘What did I do?’ 😹 I am already exhausted and anxious thinking about it but can’t return the tickets now. If I could teleport there and back, that would be one thing, but then the whole road trip thing and then the loudness of the concert and sensory overload … holy crap, what was I thinking 🤦♀️😆”
The next day, I was writing my dear upstander friends Mickey Z. and Alicen Grey to thank them for sending me a thoughtful gift in advance of the one-year anniversary of Michael’s death. I wrote them:
“I am also preparing myself to do something so outside my comfort zone, I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety and guilt about it. I keep thinking about you, Mickey, working up the courage to [conquer a longstanding fear] and your reminders that growth and resilience come from such endeavors.…
“This felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience that also ties in to Michael, even though he would never consider going due to his Asperger’s.…
“It felt like too many synchronicities to ignore, so I bought two tickets on an impulse and then texted Rhonda.…
“Yesterday, I started feeling really anxious about being away from the kitties and house for so long and guilty for doing it on the eve of Michael’s first in memoriam.… I started looking into the insurance I got to see what my options for canceling the tickets were but realized it only covers natural disasters and the like, so that’s out.
“Rhonda doesn’t even know Deltron 3030, so she’s doing this entirely for me, which makes me feel guilty, too, although I think she’ll enjoy it.…
“She asked me to send her some links so she could check out their music, and I found an older live performance that made me realize yes, okay, this is going to be special. I will probably never do anything like this in my life again, so I guess I’ll just have to jump off the diving board now that I’m already there and hope it will wind up creating a beautiful shared memory with Rhonda as Michael was always reminding me about the importance of creating shared memories.”
When Mickey and Alicen cheered me on, I said:
“I’ve been experiencing so many conflicting feelings about this but also feel like it’s something I’ve been guided toward so guess I need to let go of my anxiety and guilt and just trust 💗”
In a later reply to Alicen, I wrote:
“Your and Mickey’s encouragement regarding the concert helped me set aside the anxiety and guilt, and I have been getting excited about it.…
“Rhonda called last night. She knows this is waayyy outside my comfort zone and really wants to support me, and I let her know how much I appreciate her friendship and that I’m looking forward to creating this shared memory together. She’s getting excited about it, too, and said, ‘This is going to be fun!’ That helps because I didn’t want her to be doing this just for me.”
The day of the concert finally arrived. With great effort and massive deployments of sleep aids, I managed to get two good nights of sleep in a row, enabling me to recover sufficiently from my adrenal exhaustion for the long day and night ahead.
The drive there—the longest I’d ever driven—was a picturesque journey through verdant forests, bucolic towns, and mountainous scenery. Although I’d been a half-hour late picking Rhonda up, we had allotted some extra just-in-case time, so we pulled into the parking lot at the exact time of our reservations at what we’d been told was the best Thai restaurant in Bend. It was indeed fabulous, although we only stayed long enough to go to the bathroom and scarf down our meals before racing to the concert line.
It’s a good thing we arrived an hour early because a line was already forming down the block.
The night before the trip, I’d packaged up three Mistakes Were NOT Made shirts and three signed copies of my dystopian fairy tale along with a handwritten card to Dan, Del, and Kid Koala (Eric) proposing a potential collaboration.
The problem was the venue prohibited bags larger than a wallet in their security rules. So I left it in the car before we walked several blocks to the concert. Once we got inside, though, we saw people with backpacks, large purses, and all kinds of contraband, so I asked a security guard if I might be able to run and fetch my gifts. He said they weren’t letting people back in because of people trying to sneak in but to talk to the merch guy to see what might be possible.
The merch guy, Khari of Hieroglyphics Imperium, was a true gentleman. I purchased a shirt and asked if it would be possible for me to give the gifts to him to deliver to the band. He assured me he would help and gave me his card.
I left Rhonda and started dashing back to the car. I had around twenty-five minutes. As it turned out, I would need every minute because I got lost looking for the car. Rhonda had taken a picture, so I’d neglected to note our location assuming we’d be returning together.
I raced around for blocks and blocks, at one point giving up and starting to return to the concert as I was running out of time. But then I thought no way am I giving up after all this effort!
I pondered a moment and remembered seeing a FedEx shop across from where we’d parked. I tried searching on my phone, but my Internet connection wasn’t working, so I stopped a couple on the street and asked if they knew where it was. They didn’t but looked it up on their phone and pointed me in the right direction.
I nearly got lost again but finally made it to the car, sweaty but triumphant. I grabbed the giant ziplock bag with the gifts and started running back to the venue … then got lost again and wound up back at our car 😂
I remembered we’d been directed to cut through an alley on the way from the car. The reason I’d gotten lost originally is I didn’t want to walk through there by myself so went to the next street instead, which turned out to be my undoing.
This time, I decided to run through the ally, and I started recognizing streets and stores and then finally arrived at the venue, this time with a much longer line.
I’d already alerted the clerk that I would be running to my car to get something, so I jumped to the front of the line and slipped back in with her okay.
I arrived at 8 pm, exactly when the concert was supposed to start.
Rhonda had picked a couple seats for us against the wall, but as the opening act—Kid Koala and Lealani—got started, she hopped up on the ledge behind us with her feet on the chair. I quickly joined her, and we had a fantastic view. One of the employees had offered to let us into the VIP balcony, but we were happy where we were so opted to stay there.
Kid Koala and Lealani were both high-energy, and it was thrilling to see Kid Koala scratching after having appreciated his turntablism since discovering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (2000) in the early noughties.
I especially liked Kid Koala’s Things Are Gonna Change, and they played this striking video on the monitor during the performance.
Not only is the message tantalizingly ungovernable (written during COVID tyranny), but I appreciate that Eric (like Del) is a visual artist as well as a musical one. As a digital collage artist myself, I resonate with their collage-style auditory and visual aesthetic.
No offense to Eric and Lealani, but after the opening act ended and they were playing background music before the main act, I told Rhonda, “I’m glad I came, but I don’t think I’d ever do anything like this again.”
As much as I was enjoying myself, I was fretting about the kitties because I hadn’t been able to check the security cameras due to the aforementioned Internet connection issue (which I later discovered was due to my VPN, so restarting my phone and turning that off fixed it).
That’s when it happened.
The entire point of this journey.
The months of contemplating, resisting, committing, anticipating, regretting, and then eagerly embracing this experience.
All of it was about this one moment.
In the middle of a string of hiphop tracks befitting of the context, a song of a completely different genre started playing—an anomaly amidst all that came before and after it: Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers.
This is a song so specific to Michael and me that I included the video and lyrics in The Art of Losing, writing:
“Michael used to sing Ain’t No Sunshine about me when we had to be parted. Now I sing it about him … until we can be reunited in the Long Home.”
Not only is this a profoundly special song to us, but it is the theme song of my bereavement—and it was playing on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Michael’s death.
It was like Michael had taken me on this scavenger hunt/obstacle course, removing each excuse until I finally relented, bought the tickets, picked the perfect friend to accompany me, and pushed through despite my mounting anxieties about leaving the kitties and the house for so long … all to play me this song.
That’s when I knew with all my heart’s certainty that it was a love letter from Michael, a message he had timed for that specific second. But arriving there would require me to overcome all these barriers—getting my driver’s license; the debilitating anxiety and guilt of leaving the kitties for more than a few hours; finding a friend crazy enough to go with me; dreadful insomnia spanning multiple days that triggered adrenal exhaustion; a deep cut between my left little and ring toes that made it too painful to wear shoes with closed toes for several days; a pounding migraine; the cost of an excursion when I’m struggling to pay bills; and the uncomfortable proximity to the anniversary of Michael’s death and the associated guilt of doing something so lighthearted on its eve.
Michael knows how rational I am and that I tend to find logical explanations for apparent synchronicities, so he had to make the communication so glaringly obvious, I couldn’t help but accept it gratefully.
It was exactly the sort of grand romantic gesture Michael would make. He was always finding ways to surprise me, to spring spontaneous delights that would break me out of my workaholic stupor—whether it be building a fort so we could crawl inside and talk for hours; making me sit down so he could play all the video treasures ranging from the heartbreaking to the hilarious he’d collected while I was sleeping; commencing a marathon of one of our old favorite shows, Alien Nation (also a favorite of Rhonda’s), months before he took his last breath; or embarking on a musical adventure during which he captured snippets from the movies Freaks and Bedlum as they were playing on cable and we set them to Rob Dougan’s Clubbed to Death from The Matrix soundtrack, inventing a genre we called talkies years before we discovered kindreds like The Avalanches’s Frontier Psychiatrist.
As Ain’t No Sunshine played, I turned to Rhonda and told her, “Michael used to sing this song to me all the time.”
Then I started bawling. It was loud and dark, so no one else noticed—except Rhonda.
She clasped my fingers tightly and said, “This is what you were here for. To feel that.”
After a while, I took my hand away to wipe my tears. When I set it back down, Rhonda held it again.
We sat quietly for a while as I cried some more. Then it was time for Deltron 3030 to start their act.
Also no offense to Del, Dan, and Eric—whose stars were all out and who performed with galvanizing gusto—the highlight of the evening had just occurred and would be impossible to top.
Now knowing I was meant to be there, I was able to relax, enjoy, and sing along to their spectacular performance. Those who waited patiently after the concert’s initial closing got to experience a preview of a work in progress from their upcoming album.
As if that wasn’t enough, they waited another spell before returning to stage and delivering a fireworks-worthy performance of their masterpiece Clint Eastwood, a particularly delicious surprise because it comes from a different collaboration—the better-known Gorillaz—and is ultimately my favorite song by them. Here is a live performance from 2014 to whet your appetite.
I also adore Robyn Adele Anderson’s swing edition:
As much as I would have liked to stay to meet Del, Dan, and Eric, it was already around 11 pm, and Rhonda was having to drive the three-hour stretch home on what would turn out to be an arduous route due to poor lighting and lack of reflectors and guardrails.
Thank goodness, she was up to the challenge, and once the visibility improved a bit, we settled into a deep conversation about all the things we hadn’t gotten a chance to talk about over the years as we’d lost touch during the COVID era. We’d only reconnected when she called me synchronistically just as I was preparing to call her and let her know about Michael.
I was delighted to discover she is not only wide awake, but she was telling me about some things I didn’t even know, which rarely happens ;-)
Once I got home, I rubbed thyroid ointment into Snoopy’s ear and proceeded to greet, feed, and pet all the euphoric kitties—who had all survived my half-day away intact.
Famished, I remembered the leftover pastrami-avocado keto sandwich I’d left in the fridge the night before. After devouring it, I glanced at the stove clock. It read 4:06 am.
My knees buckled as I dropped to the kitchen floor and broke into wailing. At that time exactly a year before, I was spending my last hour with the physical Michael.
Lovebug patted up beside me, gazing at me. I put him on my lap, but he jumped off. He took a few steps and then whipped around with a look of great concern as he noticed I was still wailing. He returned to my side, indicating he was ready to be picked up and put on my lap. I did so, and, this time, he laid in a parenthesis while staring up at me and purring as I held him and thanked him over and over again for comforting me. Smoky joined in and started swirling around for pets. Lovebug eventually tired of Smoky’s tail tickling him and hopped down once he saw I had recovered.
It was time to clean the litter boxes and go to bed, but first, I let our best friend; Meredith Miller; and Mickey and Alicen know what the adventure had really been about. A few days later, I wrote in a reply to Mickey:
“I am learning to keep my heart open to the torrent of miraculous synchronicities, blessings, and healing gifts that keep surprising me. I remain in a perpetual state of awestruck gratitude to God, Michael, the Tao, and friends like you and Alicen 🙏💞🙌”
As if I hadn’t already been showered with enough synchronicities, on July 21, Michael’s deathday, I received a card in the mail from my deeply attuned friend Susan, whose wise writings I’ve shared previously.
Once I caught my breath, I wrote her:
“I wanted to let you know your wonderful card and addendum (and generous gift!) arrived on July 21—perfectly timed for Michael’s deathday.
“Even more synchronistic, I had a flicker of recognition when I looked at the beautiful mountains on the front of the card. Out of curiosity, I flipped it over and read the location: ‘Bend • Oregon.’
“The fact that you picked out that card but then waited to send it—all for it to arrive in harmony with my Bend trip and Michael’s in memoriam feels too astonishingly coordinated to ignore.
“Thank you for being part of the unfolding miracles that are carrying me through each day.”
She replied:
“Oh, this is so beautiful! I had forgotten that the image on the card was from Bend : ) So, it was not intentional on my part (definitely not from a year ago!). And with mail these days, one never knows when something will arrive, and to have it arrive on Michaelsday. For all my worrying that I hadn’t sent exactly what I had wanted to send, it turned out so beautifully : )
She later shared:
“I work at a Synagogue and each week people are commemorating their loved ones on their Yahrzeit, the death day of their family members. I think it’s a beautiful honoring and remembering.
“Something I came across in a reading recently surmised that when people arrive in the beatific vision of heaven, they forget their human birthday and celebrate their human death day for all the wonder that came after.”
I told her:
“I am reminded (again) of this Eudora Welty quote I shared in The Work of My Great-Grandmother’s Hands:
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order … the continuous thread of revelation.”
Thank you so much for letting me know about Yahrzeit! I’m sure you know it reminds me of the quote from Michael I shared in my one-year post:
“In heaven, everyone knows their deathday. No one remembers their birthday. And everyone says it proudly.”
—November 1, 2009
Susan responded:
“Oh, that’s splendid of me, quoting you back to you!
“(Or rather, quoting Michael-through-you, back to you...)
“So, that’s where I read that : )
“Beautiful!”
A few days ago, I woke up mid-sleep and jotted down these fragments:
“I don’t often find myself thinking something in my life is unfair. I see Stoic challenges as an opportunity for growth. But today while I was talking to Michael, which usually starts out as something funny I think of that I think would make him laugh, so I say it aloud and then laugh and then fall into a crying jag as I continue talking aloud to him. This time, I found myself saying things like, ‘It’s not fair,’ ‘You were so young,’ ‘Why did you have to go?’ I think our approaching 33-year anniversary makes me realize all the years, indeed decades, of blissful marriage, creative collaborations, laughter, and profound conversations we were robbed of. We could have had a 40th, 50th, maybe even 60th anniversary.
“And I realize we will. As long as I’m alive and even after; our anniversaries will continue to age with our time together, even if that togetherness takes nonmaterial forms.
“An experience I had the evening before his deathday made me understand that Michael is still with me, still guiding me, still surprising me, still making me laugh and cry and think and learn.”
Happy anniversary, my beloved. Here’s to our next thirty-three years together.
© Margaret Anna Alice, LLC
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