“My love goes on forever. So does my hate.” —David Murray, age seven
***
My soul has never demanded from me a faith more elaborate than the idea that people’s spirits remain after their bodies are gone. And the extent to which those spirits are particularly, powerfully fine—(or evil, we must admit)—they go up through generations, in one form or other, forever.
That’s enough to help me remember to be as good and solid and loving and generous as I know how to be, in the particular way that I know how to be, with everyone I know (and strangers, too).
Perhaps on my deathbed I’ll suddenly long for an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation in the sky, and a reunion with all the people I’ve loved on earth. But for now our infinite spirits are enough.
It does help, though, to get a little concrete evidence, once in awhile, of how this works, even beyond hearing our dead in our heads, and occasionally bopping into them vivid as life in our dreams.
It also helps when it’s a more casual acquaintance whose spirit you see traveling helpfully along.
My neighbor Igor died a little more than a year ago. Igor was a lovely, generous, capable, warm guy. Every day he greeted me in his Ukrainian accent: “How are you?” And every day I asked him back. And every day he said he was fine. But he was not always fine. He had some problems he couldn’t escape. And in the end, ultimately, he died from them. It happened right around the start of the Russian invasion. It’s been a very rough time for my neighbors.
Last month, I realized needed a bunch of tuckpointing—some of it routine, and some of it pretty urgent. Another neighbor connected me with Vasyl, who told me he and Igor had grown up in adjacent villages, in Western Ukraine. They were friends, and they worked together sometimes. Vasyl and I talked for a few minutes about Igor, and what a good man he was, how terrible it was to see his troubles, and the last time we’d each seen him, and how sad it was that he had died. My wife chimed in, too.
At the end of that conversation, I knew that Vasyl would do his very best work for us, at his fairest price—not because of any particular attachment to us, but because of our mutual attachment to Igor.
Igor, who is still alive to the extent that he can bond the hearts of two strangers, in the vivid memory of the best of himself. With the urgent tuckpointing now happily complete, Vasyl will be doing a big job for us this summer. And it will be a pleasure to see the results. And even, a pleasure to pay the bill.
In Igor’s accent, I said to Vasyl, “How are you?” And Vasyl laughed.
Thank you for asking, Igor. We’re doing all right. It’s sure nice to have you around.
***
Writing Boots is off the rest of the week, as I’m running a conference. Meet you back here on Monday. —DM
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