My parents, I think, moved into my house last fall even though they both passed on almost 30-plus years ago. I look around and see no luggage, but I hear their voices so often. Ghosts? Good golly, sometimes I wonder!
When something bad happens, I hear them. It began last fall when I was raking leaves. The arthritis pains in my thumbs turned a tough job into a ridiculous effort. In a split second, as a thought of futility formed in my head, I heard Dad’s voice, as if he were standing right there on the leafy yard: “Dang it, sonny, if a job isn’t done well, it’s not worth doing at all!” Happily stunned, I agreed with Dad, dropped the rake, then hired a couple of yard workers to do the job.
When I was a kid, one or both of my parents so often gave voice to world-weary laments of their doomy thoughts about household disasters (things going kaput) and other shocks to the system like unexpected bills, illnesses and deaths of loved ones, friends or neighbors.
They weren’t always gloomy pessimists. They loved to socialize with friends and neighbors, shooting the breeze, laughing, having a good old time. But there were moments when they spoke woebegone fears and discontents in dreadful tones of dire exclamations:
“What now?!”
“What next?!”
“Oh NO!”
“You just never know!”
“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another!”
“They getcha comin’, they getcha goin’! ”
“You just can’t win!”
“Go figure!”
“Nobody ‘round here is getting’ any younger!”
We kids would scoff, shifting on our feet, giving bored glances at the ceiling.
“Hey, Mom and Dad, you act like the world’s ending!” I’d tell them.
“Well, sometimes I think it is!” one of them would answer back. “Denny, just wait ‘til you get older. You’ll understand!”
I would shoot back with variations of “Hah! No way. I’m never gonna get old like you! Life would be no fun anymore.”
Oh, how they’d chuckle at my words, glancing at each other with dour-but-amused looks.
“Yeah, buddy, well you just wait and see,” they’d tell me, still chuckling but with an undertow of warning in their voices.
Recently, my wash machine went kaput, one of several appliances that bombed in the past 10 years. I was about to say it when I heard Mom and Dad say it for me in a kind of duet-chorus: “What next?!”
This summer, a woman down the street died at home after a brutally swift battle with cancer. After I heard the sad news, in a millisecond before I thought it, I heard Mom’s voice say it for me: “You just never know!”
An insurance policy of mine raised rates so much I had to cancel it. Disgusted, I was about to think or say, “They getcha comin’; they getcha goin’! You just can’t win!” But then I heard Dad say it for me.
Months ago, a brother-in-law suddenly needed emergency heart by-pass surgery. I heard Mom say, “Oh NO!” Thankfully, Kurt is doing well.
This past year, my long-time good next-door neighbor, Richard, had medical problems, including a recent cancerous lesion on an arm. Worried, I heard both my parents in their dire duet-chorus practically shouting, “What now?! What next? If it isn’t one thing, it’s another!”
Last week, I had my annual wellness checkup: low hemoglobin count, borderline anemia and a few other pesky ailments requiring anti-allergy meds. Back home from the doctor, I heard both parents sigh, “Nobody ‘round here is getting’ any younger!” That’s for sure! I also heard in my mind a haunting Bob Dylan lyric: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
I wish my parents were actually here in this house, not just their voices. I would apologize. “Sorry Mom, Sorry Dad. You were both right – I done got old! Ah yes, it’s one thing after another! And – yikes! – maybe the world is coming to an end, after all.
