To honor the dead, speak with them

I'd never been one to talk with the departed.

A prayer of thanks and remembrance at family members' graves, lighting a yahrzeit (memorial) candle on the anniversaries of their deaths, placing flowers on their graves on Memorial Day — these have always seemed fitting and right.

But talking to the dead? Not me.

Until now.

Mom did it. After Dad died, on many mornings she'd phone me and say, "I spoke with your father last night." Her matter-of-fact playback of their conversations sounded like they could have taken place at the kitchen table: What we kids were up to. Who'd died. Who hadn't, yet. The checking account balance. What her cardiologist said this time about her weakening heart.

One morning I stopped by her apartment to replace a light bulb and found Dad's wartime letters to her scattered over the dining room table. "I was reading them to your father," she said.

At first I was creeped out. The one and only time I suggested, "Ma, you're just dreaming," her staid reply spoke volumes: "We talk things over. It's not too late."

After that I held my tongue. Who was I to say? Even that time she called to say she'd cooked Dad breakfast I held my tongue. After all, she'd made his breakfast every morning for 60 years. If all this helped her cope with Dad's absence, why not?

This past year my only sibling, Bobbi Jo, lived her final, grueling months in a nursing home. It turns out she'd been talking to our Dad, too. She said she liked reminding Dad about the silly stuff:

When "that awful attendance lady" caught us playing hooky and Dad disconnected Bobbi Jo's Princess telephone and made me scrub the toilet for a week.

How we sneaked from our bedrooms to watch him and his bowling buddies do belly flops into the apartment swimming pool in their boxers.

But dark matters, too. The ones my sister and I didn't know about then: the family's money woes, Dad's lousy breaks and dashed dreams. And the health scares he and Mom cried about when they thought Bobbi Jo and I were sleeping behind those thin apartment walls.

It's eerie when suddenly you're the last survivor of the family, now the sole keeper of its secrets and memories — some joyful, some painful, some crystal clear, others still blurry — and saddled with questions you were always afraid to ask or never thought to ask, and things you wanted to say, should have said, but now can't.

Then, very recently, out of nowhere it seems, I came upon a novel, "The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World" by Laura Imai Messina. It's about the aftermath of the tsunami disaster in Japan in 2011, when many thousands died in moments. No final I love yous, thank yous, I'm sorrys or goodbyes. It's a story about how "everyone reacts to death in their own way" — one of those ways being the healing power of "talking" to the departed.

In the story, a survivor of the tsunami installs a telephone booth with a disconnected phone inside in his garden near ground zero of the tsunami to "call" his wife who died that day. Word of the "Wind Phone" spreads. Soon other husbands and fathers, wives and mothers and children wait patiently in line to "call" their dead, too. Like this young man:

"Hi, Mom? Are you there? It's Keita. Sorry I haven't been here much recently. I'm going to juku every night, and on the weekends I have special classes for the Todai entrance classes. … Anyway, how are you? Are you secretly eating sweets over there, too? … Oh yeah, and Naoko's in love. Don't ask me who with. I don't know. … Ok, I'm going now …. See you, I'll come back soon, I promise."

The Wind Phone actually exists.

This year on Memorial Day, I'll watch (for the umpteenth time) the final scene of the film "Saving Private Ryan" when the now-elderly Private James Ryan kneels in front of his captain John Miller's grave at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy, France:

"To be honest, I didn't know how I'd feel coming back here. … I've lived my life the best I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that at least in your eyes I've earned what all of you have done for me."

I'll be reminded of how Mom and Bobbi Jo's talks with Dad gave them comfort.

At a local cemetery, after a prayer of thanks and remembrance, this time I think I'll see what it's like to talk things over with my departed family.

Like Mom said, it's not too late.

Dick Schwartz lives in Minneapolis.