To begin with, dear reader, please understand that I’m not one to attend a séance. Not normally. But now, having reached a certain age in a senior retirement community—ten thousand of us over fifty-fives surrounded by miles of picturesque hills in a beautifully landscaped California valley—well, there are so many club activities open to all… why not sample this one?
But there’s more to it than that, as you will see.
Maybe twenty people in the Séance Club’s assigned room, and I recognize one. To me he’s simply “the jazz guy” from a musical group I’d dropped in on last week.
“Why is this beginning so late,” I ask him.
“Gotta be dark for talking to spirits, they say. I wouldn’t know. You a séance guy?
Clearly not. That’s why I’m here.”
“Don’t make fun. They’re not going to like that.”
“Of course not. We all deserve respect for our beliefs.”
“Right, but you don’t believe in the possibility of talking to dead folks, supposedly now in some heavenly next life?”
“Actually, I’m here because I think the chances of that are close to zero.”
“I give up, but then I’m not your analyst.” He points to a refreshment table. “Special punch there that’s believed by some to please the ‘dear departed’ hanging out above, maybe lure them into a cameo appearance.”
“You sound as skeptical as I am.”
“Likely.”
“Aha. Did we introduce ourselves at that musical evening?”
I remind him that my name is Ben Blue, and he tells me his is Todd Reaves and then asks why, given our mutual skepticism about contacting supposed heaven dwellers, we are both here.
I look him in the face. “For me, even as a staunch unbeliever, I’m much in sympathy with what draws people to this.”
He nods, studying the floor. “Say more.”
I’m fully ready for this. “Start with the likely fact that we are the only animal species whose members can contemplate their own death. And do we ever! Unless we’re dullards, it’s always looming in our consciousness. Of course, more so as we get older. But that’s true even for those of us who keep quiet, try not to think about it, deny the possibility of any such heaven or at the other extreme say they trust in religious guarantees to get them there. But inwardly? All of us seem to live with a deep-down fear and awe about the possible loss of everything we’ve known.”
This jazz guy—“Todd”— starts to say something but I need to finish: “A frog dies, and maybe that briefly inconveniences his family, but that’s it. None of them treasures his photograph like we do, remembers her fun personality, his jokes, her embrace, their triumphs, fears and failures. They don’t think, as we do, there is the end of a living being like myself and those I’ve known, the end of a person once so real he or she could be touched, heard to speak in a particular voice, known for Earthly actions we especially remember. All that may be permanently erased, become nothing, exist nowhere, never ever again to be seen or heard from!”
Todd looks at the floor, sighs as in agreement. After a moment he raises his head and says, “But there are those who believe the departed live on in some kind of heaven and can be contacted by séance. And now”— pointing across the room— “that is about to begin.”
