RB-Phone Home!?

I got back in my car, which had been running the whole time since the knuckleheads had hotwired the thing, destroying the ignition in the process. Having been a cop, I knew how to turn the car off and get it running again if I had to, but the fewer times I had to do that the better.

Once I was back on the road though, I had to try calling home. I rummaged around in my bag for my cell phone. Found it and the car charging unit, plugged them in and sat there driving with one eye on the road, and one eye staring at the buttons on the keypad, trying to visualize dialing the number that had been my home phone number for so many years.

This was going to be an interesting call, “Hi, I’m your dead father, please don’t take the money from my old boss...” Yeah, that would go over real well.

Maybe I should try, “Hello, this is Agent Rusty Bones of the FBI...an evil man who used to be your father’s boss is about to offer you a lot of money and plane tickets, don’t take it...” Hmmm, another real winner.

I was beginning to realize how difficult this was going to be. As far as I knew, neither my two kids nor my ex-wife knew about what happened to me after I died. Part of that was a conscious decision on my part, part of it was determined by circumstances.

It was only this last January, when I started this blog, that I had the actual freedom of movement to reach out to them if I had chosen to do so. I remembered though the admonitions of Drake, Dr. Geek and the rest of those stooges, strongly advising me not to get in contact with my family, since it would only cause needless heartache and confusion. Besides, I was supposed to be this big-time secret and they wanted to maintain that secrecy for as long as possible.

So even if I had reached out to them when I could have, it would have been almost fifteen months since my funeral, and how was I going to explain this situation to any of them?

My ex-wife might actually have been to comprehend what happened, she had been involved in some neopagan group during the break-up of our marriage, and had talked about spirits, gods, magick and all this other stuff that at the time had seemed like so much nonsense to me. Look at me now, I was a regular visitor to the spirit world and just got through possessing some damn fool of a junkie!

Yeah, she might have understood, but she had her own life now, and it would have been cruel of me to try to come back into her life. With the kids, Kenny and Jasmine, I felt a hell of a lot more guilt. But Kenny was getting to be a young man now, Jasmine would be 15 in June, and it had to have been hard on them to lose me in the first place. I had rationalized it to myself that it would only have messed them up more if I tried to come back into their lives in some form.

I must have driven tweny damn miles with that phone open and staring at me. I never did punch any of the buttons. Any call I made now would probably make things worse. I really couldn’t find anything to say that wouldn’t be dismissed immediately as some prank call at best.

The small scenic highway I was on originally intersected with a major interstate where I could go either east or west. I merged into the eastbound traffic, dropped the damn phone in frustration and just drove.

As mile after mile rolled by, I was alone with my thoughts and memories, confronted by all of the mistakes that I had made. Every mile marker that I passed marked another error--every forgotten anniversary or birthday, every missed ballgame or recital because of work, every overly harsh word of criticism I had uttered in a misguided attempt at making them better, every missed chance to express my love and affection for them--each and every marker another monument to my failure as a husband, as a parent, as a human being.