RESTLESS

I think I'll name him Frank

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I went to bed last night at my usual bedtime only to lay in my bed tossing and turning for two and half hours. I don’t know what was going on, but all the voices in my head were talking over each other. I had discussions with myself about NaNoWriMo and what story to write. Then I thought I should just work on something I had already started a while back. I told some parts of that story to myself as I flipped over onto my right side. Then I thought about this up coming alumni trip I’m making to my undergrad this weekend. I started to imagine who I might run into this weekend and the conversations we’d have. What if I run into someone who doesn’t know Chris is dead and they ask me where he is this weekend? I played out a few answers before settling on “oh, he was busy and couldn’t make this trip with me.”

“What’s he busy doing? Oh…you know…stuff…like being dead.”

I flipped over to my left side and started to worry about not being able to fall asleep. I made a mental note to ask Michael (again) to bring the chicken food in from the back of my car. Josephine came out from under the blanket on my right side and moved to the end of the bed. She flopped down with a heavy sigh only to get up a few minutes later and lay down at my left side. I wondered if I should pack a hair dryer. I looked at the clock and flipped over to my other side. Then I started getting mad because I had thought about getting up at five the next morning to study a chapter of Yoga Sutras and meditate. I closed my eyes tight and started talking myself through points of relaxation, starting with the forehead, but got distracted somewhere around my right elbow. The very last thought I had when I finally started to drift off was an image of my Dad on what was probably the second to the last time I visited him in the VA hospital. Dad was in a wheelchair lined up with all the other patients for Twinkie day. He didn’t want a Twinkie which is how I knew he was no longer the Dad I had known my whole life. He’d lost the ability to use words by this point and clutched my hand. I’m still not sure if he clutched my hand because he knew who I was or because he thought I was someone else, someone he’d lost some time ago.

My next door neighbor is a ghost hunter. He’s written a book and is working on a new documentary. I wonder when we chat across the backyard fence if he can sense the ghosts that float around me.

I know I conjured Dad. I had friends over for a pumpkin carving get-to-together and as Michael sliced the top of my pumpkin off for me, I was immediately transported to the den of the our family house. Dad would be sitting in his recliner with newspaper draped over his lap like a napkin. There would be a large pumpkin resting on this newspaper, the pumpkin tilted and turned so that Dad could see the face I had drawn onto it. Even now I can see myself as I lean on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder. Dad would point with the tip of the knife at an eye or nose on the pumpkin. “You want me to cut out this part?” He’d ask. “No. no…that part.” I would answer while reaching over and pointing with an index finger. This is the scene that would take place every October until I moved out of the house. I know that I conjured Dad as I carved my pumpkin. What I don’t understand is why these conjurings always bring up the memories of Dad near his end. It happens with Chris too. I’ll see both of them as just the shell of the people they were. Faces slack, no recognition of who they are or who I am. Thank the Gods that the last time I saw J, he was wearing his Marine fatigues with a serious look in his eyes, but a shit eating grin on his face. Though he’d probably find it hilarious to visit me in the state of which he died. I admit to having nightmares of what that might have looked like, but that was ages ago.

Halloween is just a couple of days away. If you believe in ghosts and that a veil exists between the living and the dead, then you also know that veil is pretty thin right now. It is the best time to tell ghost stories. The spirits are restless. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to use for my chattery mind.