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That is the opening line of a play put on by a bunch of children in Pioneer Park around 1962. I know because I was part of the dramatics class offered through the park’s summer program. In fact, I was Houdini! The play would be performed once - after weeks of preparation that included building the set, gathering costumes and hours of rehearsals.
On the opening and closing night of the play, an audience was gathered; all was in readiness behind the makeshift curtains. I sat alone, center stage, with the opening line on rapid repeat inside my head as the sheets parted. There was my mother, seated front and center - and an empty chair beside her. Having been at rehearsal all afternoon, I had missed the tell tale signs that my father’s disease had flared up again. I knew as soon as I saw that empty seat that he was somewhere else, drinking.
The image of that empty seat haunted my mind for years, bringing with it a sense of hurt and disappointment. Yet many years later, after my father’s death, the image returned - and this time my father, Jake, was sitting in that chair. Jake would have been at that play when I was a child had not a disease robbed him of his ability to be present. Now, with his death, his ability to be present arose. He was restored to his true self - and he had found his way back to that front and center chair next to Mom.
There is something in this experience that speaks to me of “the resurrection of the dead,” not in the usual way I was taught to understand that phrase, but in a meaningful way. Perhaps, through death, people we love are able to be present to us on a different plane, at a different level of consciousness. Perhaps through death, even death on a cross, our essential self can become more present to those who love us.