ARS MORIENDI: How To Raise a Ghost Assignment
On September 2nd, 2019, my father passed away. I cried hard the night and morning just before he gave up the ghost … and every day after for the many months that followed.
Then during early November while still in my grief-stricken state, I attended a month-long Santa Monica 18th Street Center Artist’s Residency. During my first few days there, on a return trip to my studio from an art supply store run, in the back of an Uber ride, I was awe struck by the sunset and what I saw as “fire clouds”.
While we sat in traffic, I noticed my dad in one of the clouds... as if he was flying over the LA freeway as Superman. I was astounded and quickly took a few iPhone pics. And I thought, “Wow, he is such a powerhouse to have manifested so quickly, so recognizably, and so funnily.".
As he did countless times throughout my life, he really raised my spirits then. And that was the first of dozens or maybe a hundred times that he has shown up for me since...often in cloud form…sometimes as a heart.
And because he was a deeply loving person, seeing him this way makes me feel loved by him. In addition to be very loving, he could also be stubborn or hard-headed. So he made me laugh when he showed up last summer as a “heart-head” cloud... Lol
As recently as last week while I contemplated how I might approach this “How to Raise a Ghost” assignment, I was distracted by the stunning sky just before sunset. I went outside and from our front deck, as I often do, took a couple of pictures.
A few days later as I revisited the images, I noticed on the second one, in the topmost foregrounded cloud, my dad’s face in strict profile. Then I also noticed the images were dated April 1, 2022. I thought, "Ha-ha dad, no fooling!".
He was a very funny, jokey guy, so it is fitting… both on the count that in his profile cloud he looks almost cartooned, like a cameo of Fred Flintstone (the cartoon character that while growing up my sibs and I teased him that he looked and acted like), and on the count that he showed up in this funny way on April Fools’ Day.
All of this to say that even though I have ideas about how to raise a ghost, I for sure know this ghost who raised me, and who, astonishingly enough, still regularly raises my spirits and makes me laugh.
