So, here it is Martin Luther King Day 2015. Tomorrow we are going to see Selma, the movie about Dr. King, particularly his work in 1964-65 in regards to the Voting Rights act. It’s got me thinking about Dad again and wishing I knew more about his experience in Mississippi and  his other civil rights work. One of his very last stories, before he lost the ability to verbalize his memories, was about Mississippi. He kept referring to “The Hard Times” as in “Mississippi Burning” He didn’t have details just that it was hard times and it was scary. “I was a helper” he stammered and I nod and say “Yes you were Dad. You helped a lot of people.” Later I found out that he was there to rebuild from the church burnings. There was a call for folks to come and help with the task of building and he knew he needed to go. Mom says he would phone home a few times that summer and relate the work they were doing as well as the fears of driving home alone at night. Notes and letters passed amongst organizers had to be burned lest used as evidence against them, mom recounts. People were followed as a means of intimidation. Sometimes people were followed and killed. Mostly she remembers her relief that he survived to return to us that fall.

It’s raining so hard out that I decide not to go see him today in the nursing home. But the rain and the Holiday tomorrow get me reminiscing and nostalgia takes over. The memories come out with the old black and whites I dig up from musty cardboard boxes. The fierce deluge outside seems to acquire a soft benevolence as I watch from my cozy couch. Memories too, seem to lose any chill or hint of struggle even as time and my father’s mind slip away. I am hunting for a specific photo, one that has 1969 stamped on the side. It’s a photo of me and my brother outside Friends Seminary our Quaker Elementary school on 15th street in New York City. We are standing together me in a short skirt, black patton leather shoes, white ankle sox and hair neatly brushed back. My brother Chris, sports a decade appropriate “Beatle Haircut”and holds a sign. His sign reads something like “Happy Birthday Dr. King! No school today.” or it might say “Silent Vigil in honor of Martin Luther King.” I cant recall if this was the day after his assassination in April or the following year on his birthday. Either way Dad must have been part of the planning, though my brother Chris w came up with the idea. “Why are we going to school today?” I imagine he might have wondered. “Dr. King was a great man. Things should be closed and we should pay attention and remember who he was and what he did. What we do now will make a difference in how people think about Dr. King and what he stood for in years to come.” And so it was that the next morning dad walked us down 3rd Avenue with protest signs over our shoulders to commence a silent vigil at the school in hopes of being a small part of a movement that would eventually manage to get the world to stand up and take notice.

I can’t find the picture, if it ever existed, of that day outside the school with dad. But I find others in which dad is THERE, sitting by a pool, holding a small baby girl, studying intently the morning newspaper as a young 20 something in Berkely’s early 60’s. And then comes the ache catching me off guard in a succession of moments unusual in their quiet openness. The moments quickly fill with the sadness and longing that can sometimes overtake me when I come across unexpected psychic space. Damn I miss my dad. The old dad, the long ago dad before the paranoia,hallucinations and memory loss took over. I guess we will never know where bad choices end and bad neurology began. The grey area of grey matter that I have contemplated more than a few times on my journey with dad.

As I linger with the Dad that was before, I am reminded of a few startling moments during a recent traumatic event. My husband, Peter was in the ER with a pulmonary embolism and we were not sure he was going to survive. I was calling everyone. As I paused from the flurry of calling and sat in the terror of not knowing, a strong urge arose. I wanted to call my dad. There seemed to be, somewhere in my neurology an impulse to call him when things were really hard even though it has been years since he was the dad that I could call in such a way. But before the impulse could finish forming, my mind kicked in and remembered. My dad doesn’t exist anymore. At least not the dad that I can call and tell him what is going on and expect some acknowledgement, some sympathy, some knowing. That dad is gone for good. And so too when I was ready to shout the news that all was well, that my loved one survived against all odds, there was no dad to share that with either. I had to remember again as if waking up from a dream in which he had still been lucid.

Back to now, I recall that my visit with Dad last week was very sweet. I sat and sang his favorite songs “How can I keep from Singing?” and “Oh Healing River”. I told him some stories and read some poems. We walked and, very unusual as of late, he talked. I was rearranging the pictures above his bed. An aid came in and we briefly talked about Ross’s work in the civil rights movement and his summer in Mississippi. After she left he said ” But it wasn’t only down there. It was way, way up, out of this country too.” “In New York?” I guessed. “No, No Way Way up in the north. Out of this country.” “Hmm Canada?” “Yes! Thank-you so much for getting that!” and then I assured him that yes, of course, he was right. He had worked also to stop the Vietnam war, and as a “Peace Field Secretary” in Ireland and Czechoslovakia. He worried about the homeless asleep on the sidewalks in New York City. There was the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington and the “Humane Borders” work in Arizona. His concern for so many causes did not stop apparently even with his entry to the Nursing Home. Checking in with the nurse that day I ask “How has he been doing?” an aid overhearing us said “He helps us! He came to get us yesterday when another resident needed help!”

Canada.Search: Bethleigh Flanagan’s Grey Matter// files.”Canada/Christmas/Quakers/1968/69?”
The 8 year olds perspective of one Christmas in Canada is brief but provocative. Mom helps fill in the gaps. A group of concerned Quakers including mom and dad and their kids organized to help shuttle medical supplies to the wounded in North Vietnam when the U.S. government was not allowing it. North Vietnam was the ENEMY after all.

Cozying up in the quaker meetinghouse in Toronto, we wrote messages to those suffering in North Vietnam from war time injuries and tucked them in with the medical supplies to be shipped to our Vietnamese “enemies”. When finally ordered to bed on that snowy Christmas Eve still unable to sleep, a debate broke out amongst the kids. “For sure I heard a noise!” one exclaimed. “On the roof!” said another. “You didn’t hear anything silly.” finally, it became clear to me, that of course we DID hear a noise and of course it WAS Santa’s sleigh with all the reindeer hooves and all. I was certain, in that moment, of what I had heard. How could it not be after all, that magic was afoot. We could certainly use a little of it in the world right about then. Content with our efforts including our Quaker convoy across the Peace Bridge and packing up supplies to be sent across the world to those suffering now combined with a perfect hint of magic, we could finally drift off to sleep.

I DO miss you dad and I am SO grateful that I will always have the memories. At least until I don’t.