I should be the last person to complain about ghosts. I grew up with ghosts and, for a period of about eight years, lived with them. But sometimes their sadness gets in your nose and mouth. It leaves a metallic taste. It tastes like regret.
My mother is something of a “ghost wrangler.” Not in the silly Hollywood way. By “wrangle,” I mean she can conjure them to sit a spell, take the load off. It’s because my mom likes ghosts. Yes, she tastes the sadness but she knows how to taste but not cry. I think ghosts appreciate that, appreciate that they can be themselves around my mom. They can really relax. By “conjure,” I mean that she tells stories about them, and that opens a door. She talks about what they were like when they were alive – funny stories and scary stories and stories of courage -- and she rarely mentions how they died, which is nice. I know she sometimes embellishes the stories to make them more interesting. I think the ghosts appreciate that, too. Who wouldn’t?
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: She has a story – one of my favorites -- about a cousin, or maybe an aunt, named Clara or possibly Emma. (My mom knows these details; I can never remember and, honestly, all the ghosts’ names are somewhat similar.) Clara, or Emma, was playing with some chums and was clapped so hard on the back that her eye fell out. But not all the way. No, there it was on her cheek, hanging from the socket by bloody cords, swinging side to side, like an upside-down Portuguese Man-O-War. Well, her friends were shocked. And you know what this cousin/aunt did? She didn’t miss a beat. She had pluck. She just gently cupped her eyeball in the palm of her hand, lifted it, and patted right back in place. Thhhock.
This is why you should never let anyone jump on you from behind even if you have promised a piggyback ride. Also, you should never try to sneeze with your eyes open for exactly the same reason.
I visited the cemetery where Clara and Emma are buried and noted that they died the same year – 1920, 12 years before my mother was born. Clara was 45 when she died; Emma just 40. Could they see out of both eyes up until the end? Who knows!
My dad is buried in that cemetery, too. Well, his ashes anyway. He has a simple but really terrific headstone that sums it up: Sergeant in World War II, awarded the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. He was also a husband and a father and he started his own successful business to the benefit of many. But the horrors of war haunted him. He was a teenager from a small rural town and he was brave and he survived and fellow soldiers survived because of him. On the day I swung by to say “Hi Dad,” there were two small American flags, a peacock feather and a union pin by his headstone, which is nice. The family plot is on a little hill overlooking a little town that caters to tourists who imagine that hippies still live in California. My dad was born in this town and he was not a hippie but hippies certainly did live in that neck of the woods and maybe there’s a few still around. I’m a tourist there so I don’t know. It’s usually windy at the family plot. That’s how the sadness blows in. You breathe it in with the breeze.
Here’s another Mom story: When my great-grandmother, Flora, was a girl, she suddenly became quite ill. (Fill in this part with your favorite Victorian illness.) She was so sick, in fact, that she died. And while dead, she found herself on the banks of a river. It was shallow, and she started across. But from the other side, she saw her mother (grandmother?) who motioned to her to stop. “Go back,” her mother said. “It’s not your time.” My mother the ghost wrangler delivers these lines in a slow, howling tone and, at times adds hand gestures. “Gooo baaaack!” And Flora, who had pluck, turned around as commanded and, just like that, awoke from the dead. What a triumph!
I mentioned earlier that I lived with ghosts and this is true. We bought an old redwood paneled house so dark that we had use flashlights to get around at night. Inside. Sometimes at the end of a dimly lit hall I would catch a fleeting glimpse of a figure. Once, I heard someone call out “Mom.” One day a man came to the door and said that many years ago he knew a boy who lived in the house. He said the boy’s father was a Boy Scout troop leader, and that the troop met in the basement, a musty damp place that seemed better suited to vivisection than gatherings of children. But I believed that the former occupant, who owned the house for 56 years, was a Boy Scout troop leader based on evidence found in the house – a silky blue and white Jamboree banner from maybe the ‘60s. The man said the boy’s father was a really terrific troop leader. He said the boy was killed in Vietnam.
Even now if I think about that dark, dark house – the redwood paneling, the oak floors, the gentle orange glow of the filament in the dim light bulbs I ordered over and over for my useless vintage lamps, the musty basement, the Jamboree banner – even now, if I think of those things and run my tongue over my teeth and I can taste that metallic ting. It connected me to my mother and to ghosts and to Flora, who lived 63 years in a house with dark wood paneling and a wood-burning stove and mounted deer heads and painted bead board and bats in the upstairs closets. Ghosts aplenty. I don’t think my grandmother, Mildred, fancied the ghosts much. She sold the house and moved to a characterless “split-level” house with a view of the ocean.
My mother loved my great-grandmother’s spooky house, and she raised daughters that love it still. I drove by it after the cemetery and was sad to see that the paint is peeling and the porch looks like it’s held up by two-by-fours. I love that house. And I loved my dark house that was so similar on the inside. I will tell you that it is possible to miss a house, miss how it made you feel, and I miss them both. I am my mother’s daughter. I inhale the sadness. I let it puff up my cheeks and settle deep down I my lungs. It’s damp and warm like the Vick’s VapoRub my mother would slather on our chests when were sick with croup. I like stories of séances and UFOs and smugglers and disease and broken hearts. I like ghosts. Who doesn’t?
