17 Seconds

I wonder what I was doing on December 23, 2023.

It was two days from Christmas, so I probably cranking out those last few holiday cards and looking forward to dinner with my family.

It was a Saturday and the most popular song in the U.S. at that time was Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”—I still like that song, damn it--while “Last Christmas” by Wham!—which I wrote about in my blog the following day- was top dog in the U.K.

In the post entitled "Moments of Wonder" I talked about how I had regained my Christmas spirit, after my listless response to the most wonderful time of the year 12 months earlier.

The reason I’m so fixated on 12/23/22 is because that’s the date of the only voice mail message from my brother Peter, who’s been gone for about two weeks now.

It’s just 17 seconds long and rather mundane, to be honest.

“Hey dude what's going on?” he says, sounding a little disoriented. “Got confused for a second…I just called to say Merry Christmas Eve Eve and have a good day, and I'll talk to you later, if not tomorrow. Take it easy then, bye.”

That’s it. A simple holiday greeting, a promise to call again, and then he’s gone.

It amazes me that my apartment is cluttered with all kinds of crap from years gone by, yet somehow, I was so diligent in clearing out my iPhone messages.

Of course, if I had known he was going to leave us so soon, I would have preserved every single message he ever left me, no matter how routine.

I keep thinking of the jokes, memories and opinions that I want to share with my brother, and I’ve got to keep reminding myself over and over that it’s not going to happen.

There’s a sensation known as phantom limb, where an arm or a leg feels like it’s still attached even though it’s been amputated.

It’s the same with people who are suddenly taken from our lives. You keep thinking they’re still with you.

The holiday timing of the last message brings back all kinds of Christmas memories of me and my brother, including one year when our parents got us a game called Green Ghost.

Marketed as the first glow-in-the-dark game, Green Ghost, which was first published in 1965, featured this plastic spook with an outstretched hand that you twirled around to determine how many spaces you could advance.

Game of Mystery

There were four player pawns—cat, rat, bat and vulture. You also had scenery, like a haunted house, a gnarled tree and a shipwreck.

And the game had boxes with trap doors that were filled with bat "feathers", plastic bones and rubber snakes.

Peter and I wanted that game so badly and when we saw this huge box under the Christmas tree, we knew immediately what it was.

We were ready to pounce on the box, but our father didn’t let us go near it until we had opened all other presents. And then we ripped the wrapping paper off like wild dogs tearing into a raw steak.

We played with the thing for a while, but like with all toys and games, we eventually got bored with Green Ghost and moved on to other forms of foolishness.

I have no idea what happened to that thing, but I see several people are selling the game on eBay, with one version going for $350.

Later in life, Peter became interested in the paranormal and he and his wife went on numerous ghost hunts and my brother would always give me a full report on what they had experienced the next time we spoke.

I was a bit dubious, but I liked hearing his stories and I told him I wanted to go along some time on one of the ghost hunts. But, of course, it never happened.

Now I desperately want to believe in ghosts and spirits, like Ebenezer Scrooge on his knees before Jacob Marley's ghost, "I do, I do, I do!" I want to believe in all those stories the nuns told us about Heaven and life everlasting, and angels and harps, and being reunited with my loved ones. I want it all.

Years ago, Peter was sharing his thoughts about the afterlife, and he said that he believed energy didn’t die.

It sounds like the concept in physics that says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but rather it is transformed from one form to another.

I still have my brother's Dec. 23 message on my phone and it hurts so much to hear his voice, knowing that’s all I have, but I can’t delete it.

I’m going to keep his holiday greeting and I'll move it to every phone I buy until it's my time to transform.

That’s one bit of Peter’s energy that I can hold on to.