Death by any other name...
So for a few weeks now we’ve been anxiously dreading the death of a family patriarch. Pap-Pap Sheffel, on my editor’s side of the family. A WWII veteran of the 11th Airborne Div. and all around great guy, he will be sorely missed. His slow goodbye was exceptionally difficult for the family, split between Penna. and Indi. I did the best I could to help her deal with this difficult matter but often felt like only a spectator, helpless and useless. Worse when she asked me about my beliefs about the afterlife and what awaits us I was disappointed in my ability to answer her in a comforting way. But this isn’t about me.
She asked me about heaven and reincarnation. I was raised with the idea like she was that in heaven you have all your family waiting there for you as she was, but I had rejected that concept. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to meeting relatives who had abused my mother, rejected my father for being a half-breed, or who spat hate at me from every pore because I was an adopted half-breed son of a half breed. Why would I look forward to that? That concept of heaven made no sense to me.
I neglected to explain that now, with our family complete I could find comfort in that idea. Instead I asked stupid questions about what age would those people be? What would we do in heaven? Wouldn’t they rather spend time with their elders? Would they know me? Would I be as important to them or would they be reunited with a lost lover from a marriage I never knew about or some other such thing. What would other people’s expectations of me be there? Can you have any fun there or is it a Mormon caffeine free utopia and what good is that? I want to drink a beer with Ben Franklin in the afterlife, or party with some Vikings in Valhalla not sing hymns in the choir eternal being chastised by nuns for being off key or late for a performance. Maybe I’d just want to sleep in and skip it, stay in bed with the wife. Would God allow that?
I’ve always been “the journey is the important part” guy. I believe in heaven here and now, my life with my family is as good as it gets. Heaven? What’s that good for? Are we going to go fishing with God? I would only want to live again to meet my wife and enjoy again the tenuous first moments of our meeting, falling in love and growing into a single entity here on earth. So for me reincarnation is where it would be at. I’d want after the time of my reaping to return if only to scour the earth a dozen times in search of her, even if it meant dying horribly each time before the 13th time when I did find her, if ever so briefly.
It’s difficult to understand and harder still to explain – here I fall short again. So what comfort is there in knowing what is beyond? I’d rather not, for me there is comfort in that – in hoping I’m right, or maybe that God gives us a choice, a menu of options.
So the journey is what’s most important I’ve lost sleep worrying that I’m not making the best of that journey. Risk aversion having chased away valor and courage, slow and steady caution has destroyed my appetite to shake things up, make a difference and fight for what I believe in. There a lot of things I’ve managed to squeeze into my life, living easily a dozen times more than most could dream of – yet many things I’ve had to let go by the way so I could choose another path. Right now I want to find more fulfilling work, or something that lets me spend more time with my family. The two seem to be mutually exclusive in a galactic Catch-22.
I saw an old torpedo recovery boat on the GSA webpage. The boat was rusted out but reparable, I thought wow I could go for something like that a vacation boat or something a 2nd address to have on the water, but I’ll never try to make that kind of thing happen. Too expensive, to complex I think. What happened to me? Maybe I will. The wife talks about a vacation home sometime in the future. Of course I can’t afford that on my meager salary carrying my current and foreseeable debt load, we’re paycheck to paycheck now and financially imperiled by rising gas prices.
These are the concerns of the living. I used to look at the world through the eyes of a dead man born again, someone who thought everyday was a gift not to be taken for granted or wasted on idle concerns following my near death experience. Now I’m overwhelmed with daily bills and deadlines on a calendar my kids are growing so fast I’m afraid I’ll be a bigger mystery to them than my own father who spent most of his life at sea. I’m losing the fight to be what I want to really be right now and the loss of Pap-Pap made me think how sad it would be to look back from the deathbed and wonder if I could have done it better. Not just to satisfy my selfish sense of adventure and ambition but for my family and their future. I search for signs and portents and find the universe dark and empty, the stars are only an abyss and I’m flying blind.
When I put it that way it sounds pretty adventurous.
So death, heaven, and reincarnation what’s in a name?
I’d like to ask my mother that question. She had visited just before Pap-pap fell gravely ill. She expressed at dinner great sadness (including some show of holding back tears) that I was carrying her family name Chandler and not my adopted father’s name. He took great pride in having a son to carry on his name didn’t I know, she said he’d be angry or disappointed to see I was not carrying on the name. This hurt me a bit at the time. But I’ve been wrestling with this question too. Is it an existential question? I think it is, on par with death and the afterlife.
My father’s spirit was invoked, and said to have judged my life wrong for not honoring him and his wishes. I wasn’t only hurt by this I bristled. I lost sleep on the question for days. Should I just change the name back?
All the while, we continued our genealogical research for the 2nd book to draw heavily from the editor’s side of the family. And watching names change with every marriage and over every so many generations I suddenly recalled that the great ancestor Wong had changed HIS name when he moved from China to Hawaii, in part for expediency in conducting business. Well why not? How many families had changed their names when coming from the “old country” to Ellis Island? Was my move from Hawaii to the Contiguous States any different? The cultures are entirely alien, and in TO&S I had spun the name change undertaken to appease my ex-wife as a move to shield my offspring from having to be subject to scrutiny and speculation about their origins because of an ethnic name that had led to so many problems for me. Chandler is a gift to my kids, and a shelter from idiotic questions I’ve heard my entire life, and again at my first drill weekend back in the guards last weekend. My lieutenant was entering my social security number into a database and guessed I was born in Hawaii. I said no I was born in LA, but raised there – I got my social sec. id in Hawaii. And there it was, my old name in the system under “Other Names Used” and “A.K.A.” and the LT shocked, excitedly asked “Hawaii?! What the heck are you doing here?!” and it was parroted by many in the room.
I was now an idiot to each mainlander in the room. Their incredulous stares said it all. My first impression was set “idiot”.
I’m always interrogated like I’m an idiot for leaving Hawaii and I’m damn piss poor tired of it and I’m not willing to put up with that anymore. I don’t want my kids to have to answer that same line of questioning and there is the answer. My ancestor wanted to fit in, he took a local name, I like to fit in too and skip awkward often pointed questions about my origins so the name change will stay.
Have I somehow failed to honor my father? As I had said he was often a monster, a fountain of unchecked rage of which my mother and I were frequently the target of. I can’t imagine how best to honor that except to be better than that and to try to keep the good parts of his legacy I outlined including holding up his ancestor and his story as a shining example. I have endeavored to honor my mother who hasn’t abandoned the ethnic name despite a ‘marriage’ to a new man – the only decent one she’s ever known by the way, and I can’t explain that. For her own reasons life with my dad might have been heaven the way I see my own marriage. I can’t say I ever saw it could have been - she was often in tears and miserable. I don’t recall many happy days for her, or many smiles being worn on her face. He often struck her, sometimes viciously and she had left or attempted to leave him on many occasions. Still she seems to apply rose colored glasses to that time in our life and maybe I’m too harshly critical out of fear of being even a little violent.
I lay awake wondering what would happen to my kids if a plane crashed into the house and killed me would my wife be able to get the kids to safety? What if we both died? Would someone get to my kids before they died? I don’t normally do this, it’s the normal process I think of dealing with loss and grief, the fear of loss of Pap-pap, we had hoped he would recover and we could visit as a family, and the loss of my father and his name, my mom had brought me artifacts including the Chief’s Anchors dad had hoped to pin on my collar one day. That day will never come, and I think it made me sad that it was something my dad and I could have shared happily, there was so little happiness in my early life and it is so abundant now the contrast so stark as to sometimes cause an abrupt and powerful reaction as hot and cold air coming together rapidly in the sky forming a tornado, only in the heart. What’s in a name? Nothing. We Are As We Do, not as we are named. Pap-Pap was a good man even if Pap-pap is a silly name for such a wonderful man. My father’s name though filled with lyrical beauty was something not quite so lovely, but he was my dad and were he here I’d dare him to find fault with my reasoning. If he is waiting for me in heaven I think he’ll understand and approve, if I don’t then in the next life I hope only to have a father as so many kids lack even that.
