GHOSTS

The kid was good. Not outstanding, but good. The problem was that even though he looked like a young Chris on that stage playing a role that Chris would have been playing, he was not Chris. The kid didn’t quite have that magnetic ability that Chris seemed to have whenever he stepped out onto a stage. Chris always managed to draw your focus regardless of the role he was playing, lead role or bit part. And he did this without force or ego or intention. He was just the guy that when he stepped out on stage, you noticed him and you thought “Oh…this guy is going to do and say something important.” The kid on stage didn’t have that. He had to work for it, but there’s potential.

Maybe I’m wearing rose colored glasses.

On Sunday, the Cabbage made a request to go to the book store. They had a gift card burning a hole in their pocket. I’ve gotten into the habit of being a hermit on Sundays and not leaving the house, but I agreed to this request. I’m never going to say no to books. Or fruit. So, we all went to the book store, scattering in separate directions upon entry. I browsed the new paperbacks, picking up a couple of books I remembered reading reviews for in the New York Times. Then I sort of wandered aimlessly through the science section and eventually walking down the reference/education isle. I noticed a copy of Bird By Bird prominently displayed on the shelf. This was the thing, Chris’s writing bible, that forced me to sit down on the floor with my head in my hands. Ironically right next to a display of Crying in H Mart.

This book store is my H Mart.

Sitting on the floor in the bookstore, crying next to a stack of books about crying and grieving, reminded why I usually have to be bribed to come here. We used to spend countless hours in this book store. Often, we’d sit in the cafe area with an overly sweet hot beverage and flip through magazines or pretend to write in notebooks. Half of the time we were chatting and discussing whatever it was we were reading and the other half was spent in quiet, in our own little world bubbles. Often we were with friends. I realize now that I’ve avoided this place since Chris’s death. I have to be begged and cajoled, bribed with ice cream whenever Michael wants to go. It just got mentally added to the list of things I don’t do anymore, like movies and live theater. The last movie I saw in the theater, I sat partially alone, watching Everything Everywhere All at Once. This is probably how I will also see the new Wes Anderson film that is supposed to come out this summer.

I’ve seen more onstage productions this year than I have in eleven years. Michael has been having Alexa play show tunes and I sing a long until it’s a song from Les Miserables, Phantom, or Hamilton even though it came out after Chris died, and then my throat closes up because theater was a really important part of our lives. The first time I truly noticed Chris, he was on stage in Much Ado About Nothing. If it were not for the theater, we may have never spoken to each other. I would not have spent so many not wasted hours in a bookstore.

To the kid on stage: keep it up and it may all lead you to your best friend. It might lead you to the person you will want to spend hours with in bookstores and weekends in movie theaters. You will spend hours dissecting and discussing these movies and plays. You will have friends that go on to other things and other productions and you will be their biggest cheerleader. They will remember you forever for it. They will also remember you for your wit and comedic timing, but mostly for how much you supported them.

Keep it up and it could lead you to a really nice life.

GHOSTS

Ghosts

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I drove in to work early early Monday morning knowing that I only had a brief window of time to get one last batch of slides running on one of our automated microscopes. The weather has been gray, cold and drizzly for days, but on this morning a thick fog had settled into the area. I paused to pull into the cemetery that I pass on the way to work because fog and cemeteries are photographic opportunities that I gravitate too. I only took a few minutes, a mad dash really, but I flipped back and forth between camera apps, playing around with long exposures. It wasn’t until later that I went back to look at and edit the photos and discovered that I had photographed ghosts. I keep seeing these pictures of places that I have visited before, places that are always swarming with people. I think about the times I have visited Talaura and how the thought of having to cross through Times Square would make us both groan. I remember elbowing my way through Pike’s Market with Chris and being overwhelmed by flashes of color and throngs of people. The pictures I have seen recently show a completely different scene. Stark and empty. Silent. And I itch to be there to photograph it myself. There is something so inviting about the emptiness.

Melancholy beauty.

Tuesday was my first full day to stay home. The city is shut down until sometime in April. I knew this day was coming for me, that I would join the many others who have been sent home to ‘work’. I had been dreading it because I am such a creature of habit. I cling to my routine and my way of life and my space. Now, a lot of that has to change and I am expected to be productive through it all. It is a struggle and day one was bumpy. I am working on creating a new routine. I’m was up at 5:30 for yoga and meditation. I showered and dressed for work. I fed the dog and made some coffee. I spent the morning extracting images and reviewing an image processing tutorial. The afternoon Zoom meeting to watch a video series on electron microscopy didn’t have enough viewers for us to commit to watching it today. So I filled that time with more processing tutorials. In the teatime Zoom meeting, we were all assigned various journal articles to present in scheduled journal club meetings. I have plans to start an intro course in coding in Python. This seems ambitious since I barely passed my basic programming in C class in college. I wedged in a twenty minute cardio workout and once the rain stopped, I dragged us all outside for a walk.

Today’s mantra: Be patient with those around me and be kind to myself.

That mantra should really say ‘be patient with myself and be kind to myself’. I need more than a day to settle into this. I was never the kid that eased herself into the pool. I was the kid to jump right in. I am learning to ease myself into this situation. What is funny is that I long to be in those empty places, yet I struggle to be in my very own empty place. There are too many ghosts flying around, too many voices. They bounce off the walls and whisper the things I don’t say out loud. They are fueled by my insecurities and they make me prickly. I don’t like being prickly.

Tomorrow, I’ll add ‘light some candles and sage the house’ into my new routine.

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.

EVE

Little birdie

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I am the only one awake and have the living room to myself. I am currently watching Little Women with a mug of coffee and Josephine curled on my feet. She's keeping them warm. I've already made cinnamon rolls, or opened a tube of cinnamon rolls, and eaten two of them. It snowed here in the early morning hours. It is every kid's wish come true, a white Christmas. The Cabbage has been harping about snow for days. She'll be pleased when she finally wakes up. This is our Christmas day. There's a note in her stocking from Santa telling her that he could not visit both houses. He's sent his elves instead to hide thirty Shopkins all around the house. Some time today, I will pack for our week in Oklahoma and make sure the chickens have food for the week, but right now though, I am enjoying this moment.

The night before last, I dreamed that a skinny French woman showed up on my doorstep. She was petite, with curly hair and glasses. When I answered the door, She said "Chris?" I looked at her with confusion and asked "you are looking for Chris?" She nodded and replied "oui!" I sighed and then gently reached for her elbow. I remember that her elbow was so bony and slight, like a bird's. Then, once again, I found myself telling the story of how Chris wasn't with us any more. I am surprised the story hasn't become permanently tattooed onto my body with so many tellings. The next night, I dreamed that I was teaching a yoga class in a room that held a potato bar. There might be something marketable here. Yogatado: Come for yoga; stay for a potato. 

I don't know what any of this has to do with Christmas Eve except that maybe I'm having an Ebenezer Scrooge moment. So far, I've seen the ghost of Christmas past and the ghost of Christmas future. They're coming to me out of order. Maybe tonight a I'll get visit from the ghost of Christmas present. I wonder what that's going to look like. Michael and I will be traveling on Christmas day and having Christmas dinner at Mom's. Maybe tonight I'll dream of driving through a winter wonderland with talking deer, followed up with a table piled with fried oysters. If I'm lucky, I will avoid an encounter with the two emaciated children, Ignorance and Want. Though it's pretty hard to avoid Ignorance even in the waking world. 

My time of stillness is up. The Cabbage just came out of her room wearing nothing but her underwear. I've just told her to go put on some pajamas so she can start opening her presents. She has thirty individually packaged Shopkins to open. 

We'll be here a while. 

I'VE STOPPED BREATHING

Shroom

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The thing I find interesting about Our Town is the message of how you'll miss all of this when you're gone. Colors are more vibrant and even the most mundane item can be breathtakingly beautiful. A coffee mug. The weight of that coffee mug cupped in both hands, absorbing the heat from the hot drink in the mug. So pay attention now, kids! You don't get this stuff when you're dead. The flip side to this coin is what you no longer have when others are dead. Our Town is not about the living as much as it is about the dead. I wonder if Chris is standing just on the other side of some invisible wall, thinking the same thing. Are we both missing the things that are now gone? What's it like on his side of that wall?

Sometimes on dark days, I imagine the people I've lost wrapping their arms around my insides. In a Tim Burton inspired fashion, I see the ghost arms encircle my ribs and guts, my heart and I watch my internal organs turn gray and hard. Don't we all see our lives as a movie, our very own personal Truman Show? We all want to be a movie, a soundtrack, a star, even if it's that smallest most distant star. It's not so bad watching my insides turn gray and hard. I see it as invitation. "Hey, why not come hang out with us?" the dead say. And it's tempting. I'd love to veg out on the couch, watching dumb action movies all day with J or sitting in the driver seat of some expensive Cadillac as Dad drives us across several state lines to exchange it for a different fancy Cadillac. I'd love to spend the day doing anything with Chris. 

I've been forgetting to breathe. I'll be sitting at my desk and all of a sudden I will gasp for air as if I've been playing that game of how long you can hold your breath under water. I'm holding my breath. Every time it happens, I wonder about how long it's been since I last inhaled and exhaled. I know that part of this is all because I've spent the last month riding in cars and planes and hunched over microscopes or a lab bench. My chest has been closed off like a clam, but even clams need to open up and stretch sometimes. I used to do backbends all the time, opening up my chest, opening up my heart. Then my back broke and my heart felt squishy and vulnerable, so I stopped. Now the arms of the dead have wrapped themselves around my ribcage and my heart and I gasp for air like that goldfish I had as a kid who would jump out of the tank all the time. You'd walk into the room and he'd be laying in a damp puddle on the shag carpet, only his mouth moving as he struggled to breath air without water. That fish lived for ages despite all his suicide attempts. 

Today in savasana, I laid with a foam roller between my shoulder blades, my heart and lungs splayed open for all to see. I stayed there for ten minutes while I screamed inside my brain the whole time. It was torture. I could image the dead clutching to hold tight even while their fingers were being pried free. Before I knew it the ding of the timer was jolting me back to the here and now and the people I've lost no longer wrapped their arms around my heart and lungs. I am partly relieved and partly disappointed.