Hungry Ghosts in the Gloaming

A Letter to My Late Father on the Occasion of My 55th Birthday

These are the oldest photos I have of me and my father in the first year of my life.

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Dear Poppa,

I am posting this letter to you on Sunday, October 30, 2022, fifty-five years to the day of my birth—your third child and first daughter. And, 21 years, 3 months, and 16 days since your death on Saturday, July 14, 2001, in a Miami hospice—far away from your beloved hometown of Mount Vernon, NY.

Mount Vernon is the place where you were born on March 2, 1925, to Pauline Zezza and Antonio Iarusso, both immigrants from Italy. It’s the place where your father hanged himself from the basement rafters during the Great Depression. It’s the place where you were the man of the house at 8, helping your mother care for your three younger siblings. Mount Vernon’s the place where you and your buddies—just barely out of high school—enlisted to fight in World War II.

This photo was taken at a pool hall in Mount Vernon, NY, circa 1942. My father is the second one from the right—the sly looking one with thick black hair.

It’s the place where you and Mom raised four children, and after 16 years of giving it your all, bitterly divorced, throwing all of our lives into a tailspin. It’s the place where people stopped to talk with you while we strolled the streets on our way to church or to your relatives’ houses for the holidays, or while we ate Italian sausage-and-peppers at Eddie’s Luncheonette (the dapper owner also an old friend of yours). That place where we both spent decades of our lives is a place that I have barely set foot since you died 7,767 days ago. 

10 AM, Saturday, July 7, My sister’s apartment in Miami

“My father is dying. Tara called me on Wednesday morning (July 4th) at 9 to tell me that Poppa had a stroke—that the nurse found him with his right side limp and his mouth drooling. He can’t talk. Later on, she told me that Poppa has a bleeding aneurysm in his brain stem and that he’s not going to recover.”

And yet, on my 55th birthday, that place of the past lingers like a hungry ghost lurking in the gloaming of an October evening. No matter the city, and I’ve visited many since you’ve died, your memory is my steadfast traveling companion as I stroll the streets.

• As I stride along a street in San Francisco, the pavement glowing orange, the smell of autumn as crisp and comforting as a fresh-baked apple pie—your favorite, of course, a la mode with vanilla ice cream.

• As I stand on a corner in Brooklyn near a father and his young daughter who’s dressed as a Halloween witch, your warm hand envelopes mine as he clasps her hand and crosses the street. 

• As I navigate the wet cobblestones in the cold gloaming in Belfast, your voice rises with the echoes of my footfalls, calling me to back cool evenings sitting on the front stoop, your cigarette burning like the tiny eye of a demon escaping in the wisps of smoke spiraling in the dark.

Pop, have you ever hear of this old Scottish word “gloaming”? I never did until I heard it used in a poem written by a fellow graduate student while I was earning my MFA in creative writing. “Gloaming” refers to the "twilight” or “dusk.” Sometimes it’s used to describe the early morning as well. For me, this word feels like the liminal space where the spirit realm merges with the corporeal one, most especially during “The Witching Hours” and holy days like Halloween or All Hallow’s Eve.

Some of the cities where I’ve experienced the gloaming, such as Moscow, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Aktobe, and Almaty, I traveled to with my spouseTanya who grew up in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union. (Pop, BTW, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in February and thousands of people have died and millions of people are now refugees as the soft autumn hardens into winter.) Yep! I am married to a Russian woman. We met at—another surprise!—a Zen monastery in the autumn of 2015. I wonder which you’re more surprised by the marriage or the monkness?

After many years of tepid atheism and fevered agnosticism in a search for salvation from suffering, I roamed so far over to Zen Buddhism that I ordained as a Zen priest in October 2014. Yep! I'm a cloth-wearing clergy member! Albeit of a faith tradition vastly different from the Roman Catholicism that you were devoted to. And IMHO, in spite of all your devotion, that religion never, ever, delivered you from the evil of your deep depression.

But maybe you’re not as surprised about my living in a monastery because I remember as a child when you used to go on retreat a few times a year at Mount Manresa on Staten Island. I recall your solemn countenance and your warm embrace before you left with your small black duffle. “I’ll see you soon, chica,” you’d say. BTW, I hate to tell you that this bucolic place that once offered you space for reflection and respite was demolished several years ago after the Jesuits sold it for a whopping $15.5 million to developers, who were denied permission to build their upscale condos. So now it’s a place for hungry ghosts.

Pop, this phrase “hungry ghosts” refers to one of the six realms of rebirth in Buddhist mythology. (I still remember how enthralled you were by the PBS show “The Power of Myth” with Joseph Campbell.) Just like with Halloween and All Hallows’ Eve, the Buddhist ceremony for “feeding the hungry ghosts” (segaki in Japanese) commemorates the spirits of dead ancestors. The hungry ghosts are stuck in a hell realm where they are unable to satisfy their ferocious hunger and thirst. These ghosts wander the spirit world like ghouls with the distended bellies of starvation and elongated throats pinched tight by greed.

Making offerings of nourishment to these hungry ghosts is the purpose of the segaki ceremony, which we just held on Friday night in the Buddha Hall at the San Francisco Zen Center. Here’s part of an incantation that we recite during the ceremony:

“Giving rise to the awakened mind, we unconditionally offer a bowl of pure food to all the hungry ghosts in every land to the farthest reaches of vast emptiness in the ten directions, including every atom throughout the entire dharma realm. We invite all our departed ancestors going back to ancient times, the spirits dwelling in mountains, rivers, and earth, as well as demonic spirits from the untamed wilderness, to come and gather here. Now with deep sympathy we offer food to all of you, sincerely hoping that you will each accept this food and turn it over, making offerings to buddhas, sages, and all sentient beings though the vast emptiness of the universe, so that you and all the many sentient beings will be satisfied.”

Just like with Halloween, participants in the ceremony dress like witches, mummies, and skeletons. We decorated the altar with seasonal vegetables like pumpkins, zucchini, and squashes. And, of course, candy! On our altar were two heaps of your favorite: M&Ms! After the ceremony, I took a handful and let them melt in my mouth as thoughts of all of our Halloweens and my birthdays floated through the “gloaming”of consciousness—far sweeter than any treat dropped in my pillow case or any Carvel ice-cream birthday cake.

In October 2017, just a few weeks before my 50th birthday, Tanya and I traveled to her hometown of Aktobe via Moscow after both of her parents died. Tanya’s father Yuriy died in October 2016, just a month after she had visited. Given that Yuriy had waited two long years for this visit from his only daughter, I think a profound heartbreak spurred the cardiac arrest that killed him. And five months later her mother Lidia had a stroke that eventually stopped her heart. Just like you Poppa, Lidia was rendered speechless and immobilized. I think she too died from a hole in her heart that sucked dry her blood-memories.

Tanya wasn’t able to return home for either of their funerals because we were waiting on an “advanced parole” permit from Homeland Security—a department that was formed after thousands of people died when the Pentagon and Twin Towers were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The Towers collapsed in the aftermath of a plane crashing into each edifice. So many tragedies have happened since you passed from this world of greed, hatred, and delusion. While in Aktobe we visited Tanya’s parents’ graves and she grabbed several handfuls of soil to bring back “home.”

The memorial altar for Tanya’s parents that we set up in the zendo at Tassajara.

If you were alive, we could have a long talk about everything that’s happened since you passed from the world of distinctions and dualities to the Pure Land. And, I know where we’d sit: at the kitchen table, which is where so many of our conversations took place. The place where you’d sip your Sanka, smoke your Kents, and scrape a white matchbook across the table. I still remember that your voice sounded like Dean Martin’s smooth, light baritone. And I remember how it quavered with grief when you recounted your father’s suicide in the only recorded conversation I have between us. And, I’m sorry to say, that my procrastinating (a trait I inherited from you) the digitization of that analog tape has led to its degradation and the warping of your words. Words just like memories fade into the shadows of time.

12:04 AM, Sunday, July 15th, Tara’s Apartment

“This is the first evening I’ll fall asleep knowing that my father is not alive. I feel numbed by all of this. I didn’t see him right before he died. His face was so warm when I kissed him goodbye on Thursday night. His skin was near translucent and had a glow from the balm they’ve been putting on his skin to keep it moist. He lifted his legs and actually grabbed the railing to pull himself up. He smiled at me and Tara when we laughed at a joke one of us made. He ate all of his meals on his last day. I’ll never hold him again or feel his arms around me again or hear his voice.”

Well, Poppa, I could keep on writing and writing just to keep your memory beating through my blood on this morning of my birthday. But as we say in Zen, “words and phrases miss the mark.” For me, this mark sits squarely on my heart.

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