This Instant

By Andrea Scarpino

The plane hits turbulence and your head jerks forward suddenly, waking you from sleep. Glasses off kilter, eyes not yet focusing. And there, sitting peacefully in the next aisle, your father. Checkered dress shirt, suspenders, glasses case in his front pocket. Gray hair. Nodding in his sleep. Your father.

The last time you flew with him, you also sat across the aisle, watched as he shared his airplane snack with a teenager flying alone. Wondered at that generosity. The only other time you remember flying together, the flight attendants called for volunteers to give up their seats. You were 6 or 7 years old, and you remember being afraid they’d make you get off the plane, but your father explained no, you had tickets, you were guaranteed the flight.

And here, awake on the plane suddenly, your head jerking forward, you’re sure you see your father next to you. Except, of course, he’s dead. Has been for close to four years. Your eyes draw into focus—another older man. Same style of dress, same curly white hair. But not him.

And you feel such sadness, then, not just that your father is dead, will always, now, be dead, but that you couldn’t convince yourself a few minutes longer that it was him. That you couldn’t remain the rest of the flight in that half-asleep state believing you were returning home from a trip with your father. Like when you first wake up from dreaming about him and you almost smell his breakfast toast and butter, almost smell his Folgers coffee. And you want to stay forever in that moment, believing he’s in the kitchen eating his breakfast like he always did.

This is the cruelty of grief—it doesn’t let you forget but it also doesn’t let you fully remember. You can’t be with the one you grieve, but you can’t be without him either. The cruelty, but maybe also the grace? For those moments on the plane, those moments waking up, he is alive, or as alive as he can be now that he is dead.

Wendell Berry says, “The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but how to be alive, as these worn hills still tell, and some paintings of Paul Cézanne, and this mere singing wren, who thinks he’s alive forever, this instant, and may be.” This instant on the plane, waking up from sleep. This instant, he’s alive. Of course, you would prefer he stay alive more than the seconds it takes you to wake up. But you’ll take it, this instant. It has to be good enough.

Andrea Scarpino is a poet and essayist and a frequent contributor to POTB. You can visit her at http://www.andreascarpino.com

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto