Keeping Company with Ghosts

Dear Mother,

It's been over a month since you died. The pain of losing you is only just starting to bubble to the surface. It's so deep. It runs through my veins and the heartache props me up at night so I can't sleep. I am a walking zombie. Alive on the outside. Dead on the inside.

I'm doing my best to honor you by taking care of your estate; cleaning up the house and fixing little things. I hope to do a very good job closing accounts properly and filing the mountains of paperwork with this and that agency. I want to make you proud of me one last time, but it's really foolhardy since you'll never know what I'm doing for you now. It's my way of more slowly saying; Goodbye, than the reality of how we last parted company.

You didn't want me to know you were sick. Why you kept me from knowing only now starts to make sense, but I didn't have a chance to really say farewell. You didn't want hospitals. You didn't want help. You didn't want me to hold your hand and watch you die. You just wanted to go to work, one last day, fuss and holler about knowing you're going to die, but not wanting help. You forced your co-workers to make tough choices. You told them not to call me and let me know what was going on, even though I was only a few miles away.

You somehow managed to get home. You walked up a flight of stairs into the house you've hated for 33 years. You put down your tote bag, walked a few steps and died on the floor...with that carpeting you hated...chosen by the husband who left you 7 years earlier with a gunshot to the head.

I rush to you once I knew you might be dead. I was the one who had to break into the house to get to you. I was the one who cried over you. Who kissed you Goodbye. Your cheek was so cold.

I thought I knew you better than anyone else, but now...after sorting through just a scattering of your things I find there was so much you kept from me. The words you could not say to me while you were alive. The truth of your life. It shows in the pieces left behind.

I don't think you wanted me to ever know the truth about some things and I'm pretty sure you left many secrets that will never be known. I do know two things that I wish I had known while you were still alive: I wish I knew you saw my father take his life, instead of tell me you found him after it happened. I wish I knew why you, for some insane reason, felt you needed to photograph him lying on the floor with half of his skull and brains splattered all over his bedroom walls. Why you kept the photos in an album next to your bed. It must have been your way of punishing yourself for not stopping him. I know it haunted you, but if you had talked about it, I know you would have found forgiveness and understanding. I offered you help, found you people to talk to, only thinking you had suffered a terrible shock...not realizing just how bad it was.

Now I have inherited your money and your things and the image that haunted you for 7 years. The blood. The bits. The sad shape of my father as he lay there, gone to us forever. Now I ask myself how will I go on knowing this terrible tragedy...on so many levels. It has broken our family and our hearts forever.

If you only knew how many people LOVED you. If you only knew how many came to your funeral, crying. If it could have touched your heart, I think you would have found a way to live your life with some joy, instead of in your personal Hell.

I'm so sorry you suffered so much. I'm so sorry I couldn't fix it for you. God knows I tried so hard to help you be happy all those years, but ultimately it was up to you-what to accept and what to push away.

As the tears roll down my cheeks, I know my heart will never be full again. I'm going to find someone to help me rid my mind of the ghostly images I've seen...the ones that killed you...the ones that may do the same to me one day.

But the one thing that is different between us is that I do know it doesn't have to be this way. I'm not going to keep silent. I'm not going to let the lies take me down next. I'm going to find a way, but until I do...I'll be keeping company with the ghosts.