Dead or Alive

ON THIS THIRD Saturday of the month, Lucia frantically searched her desk drawers for her passport. Not there. She looked in her bedroom dresser drawer where she kept her scarves and sometimes put important papers for safekeeping. Not there either. Finally she went to her file cabinet. Found it! Filed under “passport.” Of course. Nearly everything was set for her visit to Puerto Vallarta, the annual reunion with her siblings.

“Gary!” she called loudly, “Do you think it’s okay to go ahead and check in now online for my flight tomorrow?”

“I don’t see why not!” Gary called back, busy in the kitchen.

Gary hummed in his element, the kitchen. For him, cooking combined the tasty elements of food with the processes of physics. There in his kitchen he addressed the epicurean questions of quantum mechanics, preparing a table load of treats for Lucia’s friends and students.

All the Kat’s Café folks were due at Lucia’s house for the evening. With all she had to do for her trip, she decided to host them at her house rather than taking the time out to go three blocks over to Kat’s.

The doorbell rang. “Can somebody get that?” shouted Lucia.

“Pulling stuff out of the oven,” Gary yelled back. “Can someone open the door?”

“Ayayay,” Lucia muttered, heading to the door. She opened it to Beatriz, who waited there smiling broadly and holding a huge tray of cookies. Lucia sighed.

“Beatriz, I think I told you Gary is preparing treats for tonight. Thank you, sweetie, but I don’t think we’ll need those.”

“It’s only a few dozen,” Beatriz said. “I wanted to make them. Everybody likes them.”

“Put them on the table,” Lucia directed, resigned.

Gary came in with a couple of platters of empanadas and sopapillas. “What’s this?” he said, seeing the center of the table taken by Beatriz’s tray.

“Kind Beatriz, you know her,” Lucia told him as more guests arrived.

Once the living room, dining room, and foyer filled with her group, Lucia addressed her audience.

“My dear friends, allow me to begin today by telling you that throughout the history of philosophy, we see the same questions. Some of those are “Who are we?” “Where do we come from?” “Where are we going?” Out of all the great thinkers, the one who pleases me most with the way he analyzed these questions is an Irish Bishop, George Berkeley.

“For Berkeley, God is the greatest author. Berkeley’s entire philosophy can be encapsulated in one thought: “To be is to be perceived.” For example, a table is never a table unless it is seen as a table. Someone has to perceive the table for the table to gain its presence.

“Now, let me change the theme a bit. Have you ever thought about immortality? Have you ever asked yourselves, ‘Where have all those forgotten souls gone?’ I say forgotten because no one, not even history, thinks of them again. Just like the table that is not a table because no one thinks of it, the same happens to all those souls that no longer exist because no one thinks of them.

“I have an older friend named Carmen. We talked one day about this precise topic. Carmen remembered how fascinating it was to be with her dad because he was such a wise man. Carmen’s dad, Ignacio, was an engineer, and he always loved to read and learn. He was interested in aviation, medicine, literature, photography, history, or anything that caught his attention. He was familiar with Greek and Latin and even spoke French. Carmen told me sometimes he sang to her the Marsellaise.

“Carmen learned from her dad to be considerate of other people one sees on the street because each one of those people carries an entire life history. Even though we may not be able to discern the authenticity or value of others, God, through his divine mind, knows all.

“‘Pay attention to those people,’ her father told her. ‘Look at their shoes — that will tell you how much they have walked. Pay attention to their clothes — the colors they use, the style, and the fashion will tell you who they think they are. Analyze their body language, their hands, and above all, their gestures—in them you can see the level of happiness or misery enclosed in that anonymous soul.’

“Carmen told me one day, when she was a little girl, she was in the kitchen washing the dishes. She hit a glass against the faucet and shattered it. She cried because she thought her mother would be upset because she broke the glass. But when her father found her crying, he assured her that right at that very moment someone was very glad that she broke the glass. ‘Who could that be,’ she wondered. ‘Who would be happy I broke a glass?’ Her father smiled. ‘The man who makes the glasses. If no one ever broke a glass, how would that poor man earn his living?’”

Everyone laughed.

“Now, don’t you feel as if you know Ignacio, Carmen’s dad? Through her words, we get to understand the Ignacio that Carmen knew. Thanks to Carmen’s perception of her father, it is as if we have also met him. Before beginning this chat, neither Carmen nor Ignacio had any existence because you did not know anything about them. Now through this anecdote, you may feel as if you have met both of them.

Cesar chimed in. “Do our new perceptions of these two people through your story let us participate in their divine immortality?”

“You are absolutely correct. While, according to George Berkeley, thousands and thousands of people may not be part of our lives because they are not part of our perception, it does not matter, because God has perceived them and God has given them the privilege to become immortal.”

“By the way,” Lucia said, “Carmen is now a little old lady. But when she speaks of her dad, she does it as if she were seeing him in front of her. For her, Ignacio is alive inside her mind. Recently I learned that she bought a one-way ticket to join her father. She is very sick, but when Carmen uses her one-way ticket to join him she will leave with a smile on her face because she believes her father’s goodness means he must be very close to God.

To a chorus of sad, “Awwwws,” Lucia added. “Interesting, isn’t it? She may have used her ticket already, but if we ask the question: ‘Are Carmen and Ignacio alive or dead?’ the answer is that when we think of them, our mental perceptions keep them eternally alive. This is how each of us contributes to the immortality of all of those who have passed on. To all of those, I say, may you be lovingly remembered forever.

“Now I say good-bye to you temporarily. I take with me the perception of your presence here today. And you take the perception of my presence with you.”

“Don’t go, Professor, don’t go,” Beatriz pleaded. “Don’t cash your one-way ticket.”

“Mine is a round-trip ticket,” Lucia said. “I’ll be back in a few weeks to start next semester, Beatriz. I’m just going to visit my siblings,” Lucia said giving everyone her biggest smile.

After the last student finally left, Gary asked, “What are we going to do with all these dozens of cookies? Nobody took any, even after you offered.”

“We can always freeze them, my dear,” she said, kissing him tenderly. “You and the kids can enjoy them while I’m gone. I’m off to Mexico.”

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Muchas Gracias for taking the time to read this chapter of my book There Is Always A Choice. I will be posting new chapters every week. If you would like to purchase the book, a copy is waiting for you on Amazon.com.