When Memory Turns to Ghosts

Lester Davis had today marked on his calendar. The wait felt like an eternity every time, but he awoke with the joy and excitement of a child on Christmas morning. The old man was certain that today was the day his dream would come true.

     Lester was a 65-year-old retired factory worker who spent much of his retirement playing tenor saxophone in the late-night jazz clubs of Detroit. Thirteen years earlier, when his wife Pam shared the thought of her buying a plane ticket for Florida to sell her parents’ condominium, he responded with every reason he could think of for her not to go. Lester never thought Pam would leave.  

     “Please don’t do this,” he begged her.

     “I’m doing it,” she said as they sat around their coffee table, one last Saturday morning together.

     “Who will I wink at from the bandstand?” he finally joked, attempting to bring levity to what was a dire situation. Lester played tenor saxophone on weekends at Baker’s Lounge and loved to wink at Pam from the stage just before taking a solo.

     Without Pam, Lester always felt like a half-person. He had isolated himself from the rest of the world to such an extreme degree since the day she went away; it had been over a decade since he last spoke with anyone other than his son and daughter. When his depression led to a complete breakdown, when not even John Coltrane could bring him back, he’d sit in his darkened room with one candle lit and allow himself the heavenly thought of Pam’s eyes, the sound of her voice, the touch of her skin. In the end, Lester dreamt every night and day of the impossible dream: a return to yesterday.

     He missed the days when it was just him, Pam and the kids making their way in life. Ah, time, it went by too fast. Every day, he imagined hugging and kissing her and telling her for the one-millionth time in their lives that he loved her and would love her forever. 

     Mornings were rough for Lester. The gloomy thought came in waves: “another day, another month, another year…” At his most desperate state, he’d reach for the photo kept at his bedside, taken at a friend’s wedding thirty years ago, one year after they met and began dating. The photo depicts a young, starry-eyed couple on the dance floor, holding each other close, cheek-to-cheek and smiling.  

     “You’re so beautiful,” the old man whispers in agony to the photo every morning before leaving the house for his daily walk around the block of their neighborhood. Lester filled his walks with happy thoughts of their early days together, and throughout the years felt the deepest sense of eternity. He shared with his psychiatrist that the eternity he felt was the kind that turns memories into ghosts and a deep, indescribable sadness lingers. He described this feeling of utter hopelessness as “the shakes.” And when the shakes kicked into his nervous system, the old man would retreat. He could be found on Saturday nights at Baker’s Lounge, sitting at his usual table, smoking a solitary cigarette with his golden saxophone in hand. Saturday night meant nothing to him. Time stood still and reality walls crashed in.

     Spring was the most challenging time of year to get through. His psychiatrist worried. She knew Lester always stopped taking his medication in May. 

     Pam stayed at the condo in North Port. It wasn’t placed on the market. During this time, Lester aimlessly wandered through their house in Berkley, Michigan. From one ghostly room to the next he’d roam. His daily ritual was to wander around while playing sad, melodious lines on his saxophone with periodic outbursts that entailed calling her name. All of it led to the shakes and another nervous breakdown. “First the mind goes and then the nervous system follows,” he said to his shrink.

     “It’s a post-Covid world,” he kept reminding himself while blowing his nose and wiping his tears, thinking of the many years that have passed by and the happy ones that left imprints on his soul. “This is my post-COVID life,” he’d say just before lifting his saxophone to the ceiling of their house that was no longer a home.

     The one impractical childhood dream that Lester Davis could never let go of would ruin him in the end. The dream he kept locked in his heart was to be recognized as a great tenor man. Otherwise, he could not accept his spot in life. This was his curse. “Time should not feel so false,” he’d mumble.

     It was only 8 a.m. on this particularly gloomy day in May. Pam’s flight was scheduled to land at five, and he could not wait a minute longer. He showered, shaved, and put on his best clean shirt while “A Love Supreme” spun on his turntable. He then went out to his garage and started his SUV and began the forty-minute drive to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. On his way there, before hitting the expressway, Lester stopped at Pam’s favorite flower shop on Woodward Avenue and bought her a white orchid. He had the scene all played out in his head.

     For the entire drive, he did not listen to music or the radio. Lester only thought of Pam and kept repeating the words he would say to her, longing for her to once again look at him as if he had remained the great love of her life.  

     Halfway through the drive, he recalled their very first trip to New York City back in ‘03 and how they spent an entire weekend there when he landed a gig playing with a jazz quartet in Greenwich Village. They stayed at a friend’s condo across the street from the Chelsea Hotel.

     Life scenes from their sixteen years together returned to him as he drove. He thought of Thanksgiving morning in ‘06 when they went Downtown with their two-year-old son Henry and enjoyed the parade. 

     He remembered the time they walked out onto the Comerica Park field when Pam was pregnant. He remembered the day their daughter Olivia was born and the bald spot behind her head, and when Henry was born, and how his little nose wrinkled and the make-believe words – C’mon Dad, let’s practice grounders.

     He remembered all the catches he had with both kids in front of their house – Lester took great pride in teaching them how to play baseball. He was also happy that both Henry and Olivia loved music: Henry took piano lessons, and Olivia played violin.

     While driving down I-94, these memories kept flooding his senses until his eyes flooded with tears, and he could barely see the road. These were small, isolated moments in time that felt mountainous to him, like the first time Henry pitched in a Little League game when he was eight years old and how excited Pam and Lester were watching him from behind the backstop, hardly able to contain themselves.  

     He recalled Saturday mornings, when Pam and Henry were still asleep, Lester and Olivia would wake up early and go to the coffee house around their block. They’d walk into their neighborhood Starbucks with Olivia’s little fingers wrapped around Lester’s forefinger and would be greeted by a group of gossipy old ladies who convened there every Saturday morning. At the first sight of Olivia, they’d immediately stop talking and in joyous unison would greet the little angel with, “Hi Olivia, how are you?” to which Olivia would reply, “I’m three,” lifting her right hand to show three little fingers.

     And then he thought of once again opening his eyes, as he did every morning, to Pam lying next to him and how blessed he felt to find her there, and how every day with her and the kids was a gift.

     As he passed the big Uniroyal tire alongside I-94, he remembered their first trip to Mackinac Island, and the spot where Lester proposed and the bed & breakfast where they stayed and the phone calls to their parents announcing their engagement.

    He remembered how they would run from the Lager House to the Detroit Film Theatre to the Majestic Cafe, fueled by their youth and love and city and friends and the undying desire to be together always.

     As the miles rolled by, like the many years that have passed, he thought about how the kids are all grown up now and starting their own families.

     And then after the wave of memories flew by, Lester looked down at his wedding ring while his hand rested on the steering wheel and remembered that he really shouldn’t be driving.  

     The airport was crowded. He’d never check the big screen to see if Pam’s flight was on time. Instead, he’d walk right to Pam’s gate and stand there holding a white orchid in his hand. 

     He once gave Pam an orchid thirty years earlier, back when they were new to each other. It was a summery afternoon in Detroit, 2003; she was having a lunch meeting with a group of her colleagues. When Pam noticed Lester pulling up, she excitedly ran out of the restaurant with the greatest smile he had ever seen and one that he would never forget, handed her the flower, and told her for the first time that he loved her.  He planned to do the same today.

     So, he stood all day long waiting at Pam’s gate. When memory turns to ghosts, the mind goes numb, and the delusional other side is where you dwell. It’s that fatal place where all is lost, and yet somehow the heart beats on. 

     He wondered if Pam might be hungry after such a long flight. Maybe they could stop for dinner on the way. Maybe they’ll just drive straight home.  

     One plane landed after another. The passengers exited and walked past him. With each landed flight and group of passengers, he felt more and more like a ghost. There was no sign of Pam.

     An airport attendant named Raymond walked by and recognized Lester from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. After a few minutes, it came to him. This was the same old guy he noticed the week before standing at the same spot, holding a white orchid.

     Raymond was a nineteen-year-old student, who attended Wayne State and lived in Detroit with his family. He decided to walk up to Lester and ask if he needed any help.

     “No, I’m fine,” said Lester in a disappearing voice. “I’m waiting for my wife,” Raymond said nothing and went on his way. He knew what a broken person looks and sounds like. Both of Raymond’s parents were broken.   

     All day long, Lester carefully dodged the disembarked passengers, holding the orchid close to his heart the entire time. They walked through him as if he were a column of air. The gate was crowded, everyone going somewhere, heading for their luggage and loved ones and home. Ah, home.

     There must be one more flight, he thought and waited in the same spot, facing the flight gate, and wondering when they would announce one more flight from Florida. 

    At that very moment, Lester felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to face his twenty-eight-year-old son Henry and twenty-four-year-old daughter, Olivia. They both had the saddest looks on their faces. They had feared this would happen again. 

     When their phone calls went unanswered, and because it was springtime, Henry and Olivia knew where to find their dad.

    “Hi Henry. Hi Olivia. I’m just here waiting for Mom. She’ll be walking through the gate soon.” 

     Lester noticed a soft tear trickle down his daughter’s face, and this crushed him. He realized what he had done. A separate wave of sadness entered his heart, compounded by the grief he had never been able to overcome. Right then and there, he dropped the white orchid and let it fall to the airport floor.

     Olivia couldn’t hold back her tears. Henry put his arm around Lester and told him that it was time to go home.  

     “But what about Mom?” asked Lester.

     “Mom’s not coming back, Dad.”

     “Why, Henry? Why?”

     “Dad, we have to go,” said Henry. 

    “I miss her so much,” he quietly said to himself. He looked at both his adult children and said, “I’m sorry.” 

     Henry and Olivia hugged their father, as broken as he was and had been for the last thirteen years. Without another word exchanged, Lester fully understood, if only for a moment, the reality of his world and left behind the orchid exactly where he had been standing for nine hours. With his eyes already flooded, he walked away with his son and daughter and returned to a life that would for the remainder of it feel strange and unreal.

    Down the long airport corridor, Lester stopped walking and turned around one more time to face Pam’s gate and looked down at the abandoned orchid that lay heavenly on the floor, unnoticed, but illuminating and beating like a heart that will never stop. And there she appeared.

    “It’s Mom,” he said in a hushed and surprised tone. 

     Henry and Olivia turned to the gate and then to each other. Lester saw Pam just as she was when they first met – twenty-four years old with short blonde hair, sparkly blue eyes, an illuminating smile, so full of life and so in love with him. “There she is,” he repeated, holding back tears the best he could, waving at a ghost. “Isn’t my angel beautiful?” he said.

     Henry and Olivia knew what was happening. They knew that nothing could move their father now, so they waited for him to finish.

     “To simply say that I miss you is to say so many things.” 

     The ghost of Pam stood there smiling at Lester the way she used to when he was on stage at Baker’s Lounge.

     “I miss your smile in the morning and your love all day and night. I knew you were for me, as I was for you. I miss your laugh and what an evil tickler you are. I miss your kiss and hearing your voice,” now trailing to a whisper, perceptible to only Lester and the ghost, “Please, love, not another day. Please come back.”  

      Pam’s was a Mackinac Island kind of smile, thought Lester. It was the kind of smile a girl will give you at Tootsie’s in Nashville. It’s the kind you hold close to your heart. 

     After a couple of minutes, Lester blew a kiss to the ghost, his love blew a kiss back, and his kids knew that he was ready to leave.