“I will in time. Remember, he hasn’t yet grown used to this communion. It
hits everybody hard, at first, and this fluency is inconceivable to any
one who has not seen and felt it at first hand. Give us time to get used
to it, and Dad will be as fully in touch with me and my life as he ever
was when I lived there. The shock and grief of my supposed departure are
taking force from him still, but he’ll see, just as you have, that I am
the better and bigger for this one great experience, and that I never was
so deeply and truly a part of his life.... Come on, now everybody talk!
I sure do preach, but you called the turn the other day, Mother dearest.
It’s my job to get this across, first to you who are my own, and through
you to every one you can reach. It’s all our jobs.”
Both Mrs. Gaylord and Lois had had some success in establishing
communication with the next plane, through the pencil—obtaining detached
words, and some names. And the former now asked: “Where were you Sunday?
I tried to get you.”
“I had a big job, attacking a pro-German newspaper editor in South
Africa. He didn’t give in, either, but we’ll get him yet. He doesn’t
fight openly. He poses as a Pharisee, but he’s really pro-German, and
thanks God he is like other Germans.”
Lois asked whether there are any pro-Germans where he is, and he replied
that disintegrating force is “pro-anything that destroys.”
During his last illness, one of his diversions had been to plan with
his father a long journey they were to take together when he should be
convalescent. Now, after a pause, he wrote slowly and distinctly, as if
to emphasize the deliberation of his intention:
“Dad, do you remember that trip we were going to take? You take it with
Mother some day, and I’ll go with you, and we’ll do all the things we
planned. And I can tell you, if you will just let me in and listen, all
the things you want to hear. We don’t need a messenger, you and I, but as
long as I can’t get to you any other way, I’ll use one. I can help you
actually—physically, mentally, spiritually, materially—as for so many
years you helped me. It was due to you and Mother that I got such a good
start here. Now I am here, it is for all of us still, as it always was.
But it’s my turn to lift a little. You carried me for years. Let me come
in again now, as a real, existing, active, growing force—your son, sir,
wanting to be nearer and more intimately yours than ever. You go on and
take our trip, and I promise I’ll go with you. Frederick.”
A little later, he said: “I wish there could be any way of showing you
visibly the radiant force I am, now that we are all united. You have to
be translated to this plane before you can understand what it means to be
brought back into the family circle. Not all families, but ours. We are
all of kindred purposes, and there’s no separating us.”
“I wish you’d do some of your ‘stunts’ for Father,” Lois suggested.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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