A Father's Illusion

A Father’s Illusion

“Life is an illusion. When you think you have it figured out, a slight of hand can nudge you off balance. But, off balance is a good place to be. You are more aware of the beauty and magic of life; you are ready for what’s coming around the next corner, whatever appears can as easily disappear.”

These words echoed in Millie’s mind. She had watched her father’s magic develop through the years. He performed tricks at her birthday parties, the usual card tricks that held the attention of a group of 7 year olds. As the kids grew older and more skeptical, her father began seriously to expand his repertoire.

Millie remembered vividly the first time he actually astounded the group. It was the routine rabbit from a hat trick, but somehow it was different when done close up, when you actually examined the hat and knew it was empty. Suddenly the rabbit was there. The kids all touched and played with it until her father announced it was time to send it back. With mysterious words and gestures, the rabbit disappeared as easily as it had come.

But for Millie’s father this was just the beginning. He began to seriously study magic.
Before she went off to college Millie’s father sat down with her to have a long conversation. Millie remembered little of it except for its length and it meant her father was going on a long trip. “There are things to be studied in the Far East,” he said. “There are people there who know the answers to the biggest questions you can ask. I need to find out all I can. This life we see, this “reality” we are experiencing is but the tip of all there is. This life is but an illusion created by someone else, a magic trick at someone’s birthday party. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Millie only understood that he was going away and it might be a very long time before she saw him again. He assured her that if he learned what he thought he could, they would never be apart. “No matter how far I travel or how long I appear to be gone, I will be with you. When you really need me, I will be here for you,” he said to a tearful turned away face.

And then he was gone, truly gone. The plane he boarded encountered severe weather, was blown off course and was lost at sea. Millie’s father had disappeared.

Millie recalled her father’s parting as clearly as if I was yesterday. On the tenth anniversary of being notified that all passengers were officially considered dead, she lay sleepless in her darkened house listening to the roar of a blizzard outside. She decided to coax herself to sleep with a glass of wine and sat before a dancing fire she had raised in the fireplace. This would be a perfect night for a fire, a glass of wine, a close companion. But Millie was alone. The men in her life seemed to appear and just as easily disappear.

Not wanting to deal with her loneliness, Millie grabbed the remote to turn on the television. Slow to warm up, the blue glow mingled with the soft orange of the fire to create an otherworldly light in the room. The image on the television emerged from the snowy reception and she screamed. Her father! On television! Some kind of travel show! He sat on a bench in an exotic garden. He spoke. “You need to let go. Move on. Remember that all of life is illusion, that leaving one room is entering another.”

Millie could not believe her eyes and ears. She rushed across the room to try to tune the TV more clearly. She tripped and fell prone before the image of her father. “Just let go and remember I am always with you.” With those words he disappeared from the screen in a slow fade. In the remaining glow from the fire Millie held her head in her hands and softly wept. And tangled around her ankle, pulled free from the wall, was the power cord for the television set and Millie realized her father had found what he had always searched for.