“Daddy haunts this blue beach,” Minton Sparks writes in her poem “Childhood Paints.” Ten lines later she describes his power: “In his palm he held the thin string/ that threaded the pulley of the moon.”

Minton’s late father lives. That "thin string" connects him to her as powerfully as it did in his breathing days. He speaks to her not in a ghost whisper but with the same tones he used in her girlhood.

The dead are alive for those who hear their present voice. I hear my late father’s everyday. His sentences vibrate strong & stern, light & funny.

So many doctors & nurses became caregivers because of the influence of a family member or friend. Long ago teachers continue to shape the behaviors of their graduates.

“My grandfather was a country doctor who took me with him on some of his rounds,” one surgeon told me. “In the middle of a difficult procedure his voice still calms me – as if he were gowned and masked & standing right there.”

“What is the first magic phrase of your childhood?” my Torts professor asked my first year law school class. “Once upon a time,” someone said.

“That is the what you must do with juries,” the professor intoned. "Tell them a story & make it riveting."

We mourn the absence of those shaped us. In fact, they are with us. They are part of our sacred story. 

David Whyte is always on the mark. "To remember/ the other world/ in this world/ is to live in your/ true inheritance."

We live in stories and how we hear them. We tell richer stories when we make past voices present.

 -Erie Chapman

Photo: Minton Sparks with guitarist John Jackson