Given how widespread the phenomenon is, what are we to make of it? Jung merely described it; he didn’t explain it. So we’re on our own. A skeptic would say that it’s wishful thinking, that grief prompts people to impose a hopeful message on any strange event that happens along. The viewpoint can’t be dismissed, and yet, having been on the receiving end of one of these events, I can only say that sometimes truth is a matter of having been on the spot, of having seen for oneself. Could it be that in some people, the power of grief is so extreme that it can influence exterior events and make a bird, an animal, or an insect behave in a way that gives reassurance? Emotion over matter? Or could it be that there is a universal force, a spiritual one, that underlies all things and that responds to our own spirit, behaving synchronistically with it, when our need is great? I’m referring to the overwhelming transcendental spirit that Emerson and Thoreau wrote about and that van Gogh depicted in his paintings, a sense that inside and outside, psyche and matter are one. In this regard, the greatest poem was written by Einstein. E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Everything in the universe is identical but in a different form, connected on a primal level. There’s no way I can prove this notion, but it works for me. The dove has made me feel that the world is full of infinite possibilities if we can merely, as E. M. Forster said, “connect” with it.
2
An incident comes to mind. It happened in the spring of 1990, almost three years after Matthew’s death. In New York City. After a long period of having been unable to write, I had finally found my way back to the word processor. In Manhattan for meetings with my publisher about the publication of a new novel, The Fifth Profession, I had gone out for evening cocktails with my editor. When he went home, I decided to see a Broadway show. The musical has long since faded from memory, but what happened afterward is as clear to me as if it were occurring now.
The show ended around eleven-thirty. I emerged into the noise, glare, and chaos of Times Square. In the rush of traffic, there was no point in trying to find an empty taxi, so I started to walk to my hotel, which was one block east and ten blocks north. But I managed to get only halfway across Times Square when the mother of all panic attacks hit me. You’ll remember how they debilitated me when Matthew died. Unfortunately they didn’t stop. On no predictable schedule and for no apparent reason, they would strike at the worst of times. Dizziness, headache, chest pains, rapid breathing, racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, rubbery legs. The symptoms of a heart attack and a stroke assaulted me simultaneously, forcing me to sit on a curb that I barely reached before the traffic light changed and cars surged past me. “Stay calm,” I tried to assure myself. “You’ll soon feel good enough to get to your feet.” But the attack didn’t pass. If anything, it got worse. My heart was racing so fast I couldn’t count the beats. The pain in my chest felt as if a wrestler’s arms were around me, squeezing me into greater dizziness. Everything about me became gray. But I could see well enough to know that junkies were sitting on each side of me and that three street kids were interested in what might be in the wallet of a helpless man-me-wearing a Burberry overcoat and checking a Rolex watch, the hands of which my blurred vision showed to be at half past twelve. Good God, while I’d been sitting on the curb, trying to muster my strength, calm my heart, and catch my breath, an hour had flashed past. The junkies and the street kids took a keener interest in me. Too weak to ask passersby for help (and who would have paid attention in the din of Times Square on a Friday night?), I was suddenly in a life-threatening situation. An easy victim flanked by predators, I managed the most determined action of my life by wavering to my feet.
One step after another, I started through the crowd, my pose of confidence convincing enough that the junkies and the street kids fell behind. But the panic attack was worse than when it had started: my chest tighter, my heartbeat fiercer, my vision grayer. Fear as much as weakness now prevented me from stopping someone to ask for help. How did I know that my plea wouldn’t signal how defenseless I was to someone ready to take advantage? I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to get the words out. I had a nightmarish vision of being taken to Bellevue.
Keep walking, I told myself. Get to the hotel. That became my mantra. Get to the hotel. One step after another. In a fog, I managed to reach Sixth Avenue. Under a streetlight, I looked at my watch, dismayed to discover that another half hour had flashed past. It was now one A.M. I searched the avenue for an empty taxi. All were occupied. I had the unnerving conviction that, even if an empty taxi approached, the driver would take one look at my unsteady condition and speed onward.
Ten blocks, I told myself. That’s all I have to go. Earlier in the day, I had walked that distance in fifteen minutes. Now, as the blocks stretched ahead of me, they seemed like miles. Another group of street kids assessed me. I forced myself onward. Two blocks and thirty minutes later, I found myself aiming toward the next street-light. After hanging on to it, I wavered toward the next one. I’m sure I looked drunk. At one-thirty in the morning on what was now an almost deserted Sixth Avenue, I was so debilitated by my swirling mind and racing heart that I feared I was going to collapse. But if I did, I kept warning myself, there was a good chance that after the street predators finished with me I would never wake up.
I started to pray. But not to God. To Matt. I’m in trouble, son. I need help. As I plodded toward another streetlight, I prayed harder. Matt, this is serious. I need your help. In my desperation, I suddenly had the sense of a small figure putting an arm around my right side, supporting my unsteady weight. Years later, as I write this, I can still feel the palpable presence leaning against me, holding me up. The help being given to me was so strong that I didn’t need to grab each streetlight and try to catch my breath. I was now able to aim toward the end of the block and the end of the next one. The sense that Matt-himself frail and thin from his operation-was holding me up was uncanny. Then I turned the corner toward the hotel, and as abruptly as the sense of him had come, it left. I was on my own again, managing the last few unsteady steps to the hotel. Inside, the clock on the wall showed five to three.
I don’t offer that story as a version of synchronicity. It wasn’t. As far as I’m concerned, Matt was holding me up, helping me along, but he wasn’t visibly there. No meaningful coincidence of the inside and the outside occurred. I can’t prove anything extraordinary happened. The point is something else, the sense that I have each day (in less dramatic ways, usually) that my son is with me. I was raised a Roman Catholic. In grade school, the nuns used to talk to us about guardian angels. At the time, I thought of it as a pleasant notion. Now I think of it as much more. Often when I feel overwhelmed with cares and I can’t think of a solution, I ask Matt (or my dead mother or two writers, now deceased, who were father figures to me, Philip Young and Stirling Silliphant) to find me an answer. Almost always, I receive it. A skeptic would call this a psychological device that happens to work, without having a spiritual basis. I can’t prove anything. This is a book about candor and faith. All I know is, whenever I need help and ask for it, I’m not alone.