"Sue's Here!" by Sue Wright

Sue’s here!” That was me, as I pushed through the back door of my parents’ home whenever I stopped by from our house on Seaport Circle, six blocks away. Their darling Cape Cod in the Nottingham section of Liberty was not my childhood home. I had grown up in Raytown. Still, I felt comfortable using their extra automatic door opener to enter the garage and kitchen without knocking as though I had been raised there. I don’t recall startling Mom or Dad, with my surprise visits. On the contrary, they loved me showing up unexpectedly for chitchat.

Mom saw me the minute I stepped inside the house, but Dad was a different story, he is the reason I ritually sang out, “Sue’s here!” Dad was blind for the last fifteen years of his life. He didn’t know I was in a room with him unless I announced myself.

Times I popped in, which were almost daily, I’d sit with them in their curtained, rather dark living room where Dad spent twenty-four hours a day in his recliner “watching” TV, listening to Talking Books, or dozing. The truth is, it was difficult knowing what was going on behind the glasses he continued wearing irrespective of the fact the glasses provided not a scintilla of improved vision. Mom patched pockets onto all of his undershirts so he had a place to stow gum and his eye drops. Chewing gum and squirting the glaucoma prescription into his eyes whenever his watch reminded him were Dad’s sole attempts at self-sufficiency. Otherwise, he lived happily, dependent on my mother. She rarely complained about their lifestyle and never adjusted to being without him after he died. Mom died two years later.

The Christmas evening following my Dad’s death, October 2, 2006, I left the Hon to wash the dishes ( at his insistence), so I could curl up in one of the bedroom chairs and read the newspaper which had gone untouched during our busy day of family celebration. Sitting in the quiet, I felt to my surprise, a cool breeze circle my face and a voice say, “Dad’s here.”

“Dad?” I queried, full of wonder, me hearing him but as blind to seeing him as he had been to seeing me. Yet, in that grand and lovely moment, neither of us required a sense of sight. FEELING each other’s presence was quite enough.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Merry Christmas to you,” I whispered breathlessly. And Dad was gone.

All this to say, sometimes in my soul’s peace and quiet—sometimes when I’m half-deranged with doubts and worries, grief and pain—I find someone else likes dropping by, those visits seldom planned, but are always welcome.

“God’s here!” says the voice.

“Let’s talk,” says I. “