A Virtual Call to My Deceased Uncle

 

I spoke with my deceased uncle today. Let me tell you how that came to be.

It’s been more than a month since California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to stay home to prevent the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. The situation is vividly depicted in Kitty O'Meara’s poem, And The PeopleStayed Home …“and read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still … Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.”

In a New York Times op-ed, Taylor Lorenz advises us to Stop Trying to Be Productive.  She writes that the internet wants you to believe you aren’t doing enough with all that “extra time” you have now. But staying inside and attending to basic needs is plenty.

I don’t like being told what to do. It’s my time, and I am going to spend it my way. This is because my sense of obligation to obey others who give me orders is underdeveloped.

I decided to write a book. I even chose a title for it:My Anxiety-DrivenLife. I spent a week writing pages. But I got stuck,so I put patches over my eyes, something you might do on a long flight. My hope was not fall asleep, but to get my brain to sort itself out. I dreamed of writing more pages. But nothing serious happened. I remained stuck, as if the ink had dried. It wasn’t as easy a task as I thought. As Gene Fowler famously remarked: “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

So for a few days, I did nothing. Nothing except take a walk to nearby public park, hoping something would take shape in my mind without even thinking about it. On the third day, I asked myself, “Why don’t you read some books?” OK, I’ll do this. I know I’m a slow reader, but what does slow matter in these times? We ought to be slow. The time of rushing is over.

I added two non-fiction books to my digital library, thanks to Amazon Kindle. I liked the first one, Ten Rules of Successful Nations.It’s well-written and easy to read, but the second book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century,is a challenging read.

The author,Stanford professor Walter Scheidel, argues that more-equal distributions of wealth correlate with calamitous events – world wars, communist revolutions and devastating pandemics. But as Stephen Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now, says:“Inequality is better than poverty.”

Though I am fortunate to be my quarantined with my wife and children, I am still feeling a void in my soul. No book, no writing and no activity can replace direct interaction with fellow humans.

A thought stirred: Why don’t you talk to your uncle-and-best-friend? But he passed away last year. How can I talk to a dead man? Am I starting to hallucinate? I took a long walk during the sunset in a familiar park. I heard something whisper in my ear: Give Uncle Zaher a call.

I did.

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THE NUMBER YOU ARE DAILING IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. PLEASE CHECK THE NUMBER AND DIAL AGAIN.

Yes, this was true,Uncle Zaher was dead, his phone no longer in service.

But I didn’t want to accept this. I didn’t want to admit that the number I was calling would not work, because it was more than a number to me. It had a spirit and a meaning, like life itself. So I made a spiritual call.

Me: Hello, uncle. How are you doing?

Uncle: Hello, yes, great, it’s so nice to hear your voice. Are you doing well?

Me:Compared to who?

Uncle: Compared to me and some of my friends. I’m fine for my age, but ageing is something we can’t do anything about, except to enjoy every minute of what remains. I never wanted to live in fear of dying.

Me: Indeed. You were always a source of inspiration and never lost that sense of humor.

Uncle: By the way, how is your mom?

Me: She got stuck in Afghanistan because of this coronavirus. There are no flights coming from Afghanistan. She was a little depressed after losing Gulalai and Sharifa. It’s hard for a mother to lose two daughters to cancer. So she thought going back to the homeland and seeing some relatives would help her deal with loss.

Uncle: This is called a geographic cure. It’s a psychological issue.

Me: What do you think of the quarantine imposed by this coronavirus?

Uncle: As a retired physician, I know it’s a killer, but I’ve always believed that it’s how your body and mind react to things like this. I know it’s deadly and scary stuff, but fear doesn’t save us. The more we fear, the more we suppress our immune system. So I would do everythingI can to avoid the virus, but I would not allow myself to live in fear even for a day.

Me: Someone said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Uncle: When I was in Afghanistan during the early 1980s as medical doctor, I was treating the Afghan mujahedeen, then called freedom fighters, who were fighting the Red Army. It was tough time. I saw how these poor, destitute people fought the advance of the Russians.What I realized was that at the end of the day, they would share laughter. They were not afraid.

Me: Agreed. Fear spreads faster than a virus, and it paralyzes your nervous system just like a virus.

Uncle: I am reading a fascinating book,Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, a Jew who was cast into a Nazi concentration camp in the 1930s. Miraculously, he survived while many perished. This bookis less about what he suffered and lost than it is about the source of his strength to survive. He said those prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope, were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from a lack of hope, a lack of something to live for. In contrast, Frankl kept himself and his hope alive by summoning thoughts of his wife and the prospect of seeing her again, and by dreaming of lecturing someday after the war about the psychological lessons learned from Auschwitz experience.

Me: Yes, I recall reading this book. Many prisoners who desperately wanted to live did die, some from disease, some in the crematoria. But Frankl’s concern is less with the question of why most died than it is with why anyone survived at all.

Uncle: Frankl’s most enduring insight is that forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one – your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you feel and do about what happens to you.

Me: It is always a pleasure talking to you, Uncle.

Uncle: Likewise. Timeto hit the gym. Be well, my nephew. This, too, shall pass!

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