The other side

The dead, it turns out, like to be talked about.

The dead, it turns out, like to be talked about. Sometimes they’re going through a tough time, a rough patch, and it helps them to hear the thoughts of those of us on the other side.

Not all the dead are the same, of course. Just as in life we have our crosses to bear, the dead vary in what they’re working through. There might be a lot to work through. A lifetime’s worth.

*

From time to time, I think about therapy. Paying someone to help me work through my tangled thoughts, but always the same idea pops into my head: what if there is no way through. The tangle is here to stay.

It’s the dead that gave me that idea, thinking of them processing a life and a death’s worth of joys, shames, rages. And here’s me thinking that I need to cut the grass. Or do something with the tomatoes in the freezer from last August.

*

More tomatoes are coming. I inspected the tiny yellow emerging blossoms this morning in my bathrobe. The sun had come up over the mountain at precisely the moment I looked out the window with my coffee in hand. I took this as a sign and headed outside to watch the dew on the various surfaces.

Miniature worlds. Dew drops on wrinkled petals. Hairy stems. Cabbage’s rubbery green and carrot’s elaborate frill. A pale grey slug caught heading home after an all-nighter.

*

I’m always half way in conversation with myself. The other half of the time I am receiving transmissions. The dead want us to know it’s all nobler than we have imagined. The relentlessness of tomatoes. Sun coming up and going down.

Therapy might remove all this claptrap, this moody magic. I prefer the agony of morning. The dead are multiple, they are in our midst; they are varied in their concerns. We can rise in the morning and go about our days. We can rise and salute them, those steady travellers, we a little sleep-drunk, our concerns dissipating in the yellow air.