An Update About A Father Posthumous

James Anthony Ellis
Editor, Legacy Magazine

Where do we begin with an update?

I imagine it would have to start in the afternoon of March 15, 2021, after I drove away from Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, where I said goodbye to you, your lifeless body left behind, with a soul moving towards a greater grace in higher realms.

In a slow drive up Pacific Coast Highway, I listened to the recording I made right after you passed. I don’t know exactly why I recorded it, though perhaps I wanted to capture one more memory with you.

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In my travels, I made a right onto Warner Avenue, a left onto Bolsa Chica and then a right on McFadden, before a final left onto Cambay Lane, where over 35 years I had always returned to see you there.

But this time it would be different.

You would not be there.

Your chair was there, your furniture was there. All the possessions – books, files, greeting cards, dishes – they were all there.

Everything was the same, save for the one most important thing.

And so, the update starts here.

Since you departed, we found a real estate person and got the house all cleaned out. It didn’t take long to sell. There were two major options for buyer. Cash in the hand from a foreign investor who would use the home as a rental property. Or a family of four – with a young daughter and son. Since the latter choice would be a bit of a gamble, the probate lawyer suggested going with the foreign investor.

Of course, we went with the family. You would have wanted it that way.

It was tough watching my childhood home – your house – slowly get gutted and cleared of your belongings.

You apparently saved every single file and piece of paper. Mom’s depiction of you as a professional “paper shuffler” may have been accurate. Along with Norman and Kathy and Mary Lynn, we all went through the boxes, folders, files and pieces of paper to ensure we weren’t throwing away any important documents or any golden memories.

Your system was a random one. Three separate files labeled “Car” wouldn’t hold the pink slip we needed for the Chevy, but it did hold oddities such as a single piece of paper for a Red Cross donation slip or a magazine subscription. Even so, miraculously Norman was able to find the needle-in-the-haystack car pink slip … in the file labeled “Spectrum TV.”

Since the sale of the house, you and I somehow would still visit there on Cambay Lane.

And it would come in the surreal dreamscape behind sleep. You would understand this. For you taught me of this.

In each of the visits you never really said anything. Just a presence, routinely jovial or upbeat. A look into the eyes, a nod of the head. You would wear varied garb, almost like trying on different costumes for various parts in a play. The first dream I had a few days after your passing, I was in the ole house and I was looking for you. But you were not there. I heard a voice tell me “He is in class right now.” Hmm OK. I don’t totally get it, but I bet I’m not supposed to.

Another time, I was in the home hallway and you walked through basically at the age of about 25. A fit man you were. But the most present memory I have with one of your visits was when I was standing in the Cambay home porch and you appeared. The embrace – in my mind’s eye now – was actually tactile, like I could truly physically feel the warmth of a real body.

You have even visited your sister Amy who, at 100 years of age, still enjoys calling me with an update on her latest dream space that you occupied. Though you normally don’t speak audibly in her dreams either, she did have one dream in which you just had to tell her: “Tell Jimmy that I liked to play sports and be outside with my friends. I wasn’t always a hermit growing up.” This was in response to one conversation I had with Amy on the phone when I depicted you as a loner who didn’t get out much.

Besides surreal yet real visits behind sleep, you have also appeared in a few mystic readings over the two years. One message stated that since I started a new career in 2000, you have been quite proud of my work there. You mentioned that you have been visiting grand old England, a location with a lot of family history. And you also wanted me to know that the reason you were so stoic was because that was the way men were taught to be from their upbringing. Oh, and you had one major message for me: “Are you writing?”

Well of course, here we are.

And yet, more than dreams, more than mystical readings, the lasting update – here in this time and space – will be what I have done with the legacy passed down to me.

I am still like you – still battling the BS smokescreens and lies offered up by the pretentious and fake posers in government and the media. I still push for the truth to reveal itself to a possibly gullible and unknowing public. I still puke at a cackle of a certain politician that you couldn’t stand.

I am still peeking around every corner, watching on, to see what I can learn – not just for myself but for those who may read or hear my words.

I still believe in the higher realms, spirit guides and the innate intuitive abilities we all have within ourselves. And though I am not there with you, I still have faith in the fruitful pastures that you most likely now inhabit in some afterworld we never know … until it is our time.

For now then I say … thank you.

Again.

And just know that whenever you have any other updates, give a message, offer up a dream, come through the waves however you believe would work best.

I’ll gladly pass along the good word.