Recently my Uncle Dale passed away. He was some eighty-five years young, and he left behind my Aunt Kay who is perhaps one of the sweetest and kindest women one could ever hope to know. Dale had been suffering from Alzheimer's for a long time, and he and Kay had moved from their home in Texas. It's a very sad thing, and I cannot say I know either of them well. We attended their 50th wedding anniversary long ago, and I don't remember much about them. It wasn't until recently that they came back into my family's lives. Given Dale's condition, my mother sent Kay a copy of Aboard the Phantom Express. Given the book's subject, and her own situation, I was nervous about how she would receive it.
Kay was remarkable. She read the book cover to cover and loved it. She shared it with her friends and book club. She could have been my agent to several publishers for her enthusiasm. It was her comment about it that stunned me the most. She said that after reading it, she had a sense of resolution, a sense of letting go of Dale. Even though he had not passed, his mental facilities and all else were long gone, even though he himself remained. Still, as anyone who deals with Alzheimers can tell you, this is not living...but I won't go into Alzheimers this time. Kay read this book as I originally intended it, as a way of dealing with that ultimate finality of death.
It's strange to look back on my first years writing this book. I was very young when my grandfather (on my mother's side) died, and although I remember very little about him, I remember clearly the emotions of the time when I was told. I was traumatized. Up until that point, I knew nothing about death or its existence. The concept that my grandfather was gone and not coming back just didn't register. I remember curling into a ball on or under my bed and crying very hard for a long time. To this day I think on the time and shudder. All told, I lost a lot of loved ones young. Each of us in our own time is bound to.
Over the years, coping with death is a constant struggle. We all know we will one day cease to be, and I suppose the thought of a ceasing of consciousness is especially hard for me. The dark, unknown void frightens all of us. It twists in my brain sometimes like a terrible snake, or it wrenches at my heart for a few minutes, then it passes.
It's funny that I started writing out of self preservation. I thought if I wrote, some part of me would remain. I would remain alive in some sense in others' imaginations. I wrote and found I loved writing but still the lack of resolution remained. Then I stumbled on the Phantom Train and I thought, "what a perfect way to explore my phobia ... that ultimate question that nags everyone. 'What is on the other side? How do I get there?'" I started to write so that I could find that resolution, so that I might find peace.
It's been fifteen years of constant rewrites, of toying with different thoughts and ideas and still this book is an unfinished or rather unpublished work. Sure, I had self published it, but somehow the lack of widespread diversity hampered what I felt was the true spark in it. When I got the letter from Kay, I finally felt like I had accomplished what I set out to do.
A few weeks later I showed it to my boss, and in reading it she started to cry. She'd lost her aunt very young, and reading the book she got a sense of the same resolution. In the end, this is a children's story, and kids love the adventure and mystery of the train. Ultimately, however, it's adults who have come to grasp the story's true meaning and purpose.
I don't have an answer myself to that ultimate question. I don't know if anyone has or ever will. One day we all must take that journey, like it or not. If we are lucky, a part of us will remain in those around us, in the works we have done for others. I suppose it is there where part of the answer to the ultimate question lies. In life, and death, there is always love.
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