Preface to Rebeca’s Poems - Rewritten 20 June 2022
Rose, the eldest of her two daughters, folded laundry while listening to our meandering conversation about the weather, tree blossoms, birds outside, and people. When Rebeca commented, “I hope my writing is preserved,” I assumed she meant it for Rose’s ears. Although Elwin had been my companion for the previous nine years, Rebeca (his sister) and I weren’t close. I hadn’t even known that she was a writer and belonged to various writing groups, along with taking writing classes at Diablo Valley College.
That was our last visit. She died May 4, 1985, two weeks before her 42nd birthday. I naively thought that I’d no longer hear from her.
One evening, not long after her passing, her husband dropped by our home and gave me an envelope with $100 that Rebeca had bequeathed to me. I decided to use it to make hand-bound books for her mother, husband, two brothers, and two daughters. The font for the Brothers typewriter cost nearly half the money.
I sat at the desk and typed the ninety-six poems and stories into our Commodore computer, printed off a set, then laid the papers on the carpet face up. I didn’t see a pattern or chronology. Alphabetical wouldn’t work because many remained untitled. I couldn’t figure out the first, last, or any logical sequence.
Finally I said, “Ok, Rebeca, I have no ideas.” Suddenly I knew for certain "John Ol’ John" came first. I set it beside me, face down. Then I knew the second, and the next and next until I placed the last piece "Gods Song"face down. I photocopied the pages, bound the books, and considered the project complete.
Eleven years later, in 1996, Ancestry Publishing launched the genealogy website ancestry.com. Three years later the LDS Church launched a free website, FamilySearch.Org. Both sites, in addition to having trees and historical records, accommodate photographs, documents, and stories. By then a laptop had replaced the Commodore and I worked on both sites and occasional blogs while comfortably sitting on my loveseat with the tv in the background. However, even though by 2009 I had contributed over 5,000 items to FamilySearch, I didn’t add Rebeca’s writing to either website or a blog.
After Amazon launched Kindle books in 2007, I considered making a Kindle version of her writing but thought the likelihood of someone finding it on Amazon less than the proverbial needle in a haystack.
By 2021, an iPad replaced my laptop but I still worked on the loveseat with tv in the background. That year, while working on FamilySearch, I felt inspired, or prompted as my father would say, to make a new digital document of all of Rebeca’s writing and to add some of them to her FamilySearch page. I wanted to end with "Change" because I had the distinct feeling of Rebeca watching me. However, Peter wanted "Gods Song" so I kept the original order.
The following year, in March 2022, Elwin, my companion, shared hospital room with a Baptist pastor. After the doctor told us that Elwin may have months or a few years to live, the pastor (who had received a similar prognosis) told us, “Focus on the journey.” We then decided to create a blog.
In May, I set up a template for the blog. While doing so, I felt a pressing inspiration to load Rebeca’s writing onto her own site. However, I didn’t preserve the original line indentations because of the time-consuming coding it requires. I might go back and add indentation; but for now, I consider the project completed.
My father, an aero-space engineer, believed in duplicatable, peer-reviewed experiments. That’s how he raised me. I trust science. I don’t trust anecdotes. I don’t trust memory. We remember things that didn’t happen, forget things that did, and the rest lie somewhere between fiction and truth. According to a 2005 Gallop poll, only 21% of the people in the United States believe that the living can mentally communicate with the deceased.
However, I tell my experiences with Rebeca’s writing as an anecdote. I believe that she determined the order of her writings, nudged me to load them onto FamilySearch, and then her website.
My father thinks a thin veil separates us from the departed. I wish it was thinner. I’d love to spend another spring day visiting with Rebeca while Rose folds laundry.
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Afterword
A butterfly larva under goes metamorphosis in a cocoon and emerges as a butterfly. A dragonfly nymph does not have a cocoon. When it’s ready to change into a dragonfly, its exoskeleton splits and the dragonfly crawls out.
Similarly, some religions believe that when a person dies:
(a) they break free from their body,
(b) assume residence on the other side of a veil, and
(c) are able to communicate or interact with the people still living on earth