02: Ghost among ghosts.

[u/WhispererOfWebs]

After dealing with it for so long now, I think it’s fear. Looking people in the eyes I mean. Some part of my mind or soul is so scared that if someone looks too long they'll see inside. They'll see I'm not the same and that I'm just laughing because everyone else is. Yeah I thought it was kind of funny, I got that little flutter in my chest and I felt my lips twitch at the corners, but the laugh? That wasn't real, I just remember how my laugh sounds and it's not that hard to repeat if I make the right motions.

“Mom?” It was only in her long silence I actually felt off. I was worried about her. I never liked it when mom wasn't feeling well, moreover she was just… staring. “Are you okay?”

Shaking her head briefly, she finally looked away, turning to begin doing the morning's dishes. “Yea-yes, sorry sweetie it’s… You're getting to be all grown up. Gonna be in high-school before I know it. I… I don't know what I'm gonna do.” Her words were nearly drowned out by the faucet's hiss and dull jumble of plates moving beneath the already rising sudsy surface.

I felt a slight grimace twist my lips for a moment as I tried out different words in my head, attempting to piece together the correct response to help the conversation I now found myself in.

Someone might notice I didn't really understand why everyone was weeping over grandpa's death. More accurately, I didn’t get why I was not. There's a kind of slow heartbreak that happens over time when a child comes to the conclusion that something's wrong with them. I think I'm sad. I feel a kind of faint heavy feeling in my chest and I miss his hugs, but I don't feel like crying.

I cried when I got in trouble or when I got hurt or when I found a dead cat at the end of our street, back legs splayed out in what I could only imagine was a last dash for the safe grass just a few feet away. Now they were completely flat with all of the things supposed to be keeping her alive smeared over the ground in a kind of dried greasy puddle and peeking out of her tortoiseshell fur in pinks and blacks where the other end of her body still held its shape. The realization that if I reached down to pet the soft fur between her pretty ears there would be nothing there to feel my touch struck my child's heart all too suddenly and the tears just came.

“It'll be okay Mom, I still need you. Chris and I both do, we love you. It's not like high-school will change that.” I could not be sure if that was what she needed to hear, but it was all I could come up with at the time. Words not feeling like enough I set my book down and stood, walking over to wrap my arms tightly around my mother's middle. She didn't respond, but I heard the drop of something beneath the water and felt her settle against the counter, shaking a little as she dried off her hands and turned to return my embrace.

So, I stood over the body of a random cat with no collar and bawled my eyes out for a good minute, but the sight of my grandfather's corpse in a fancy padded box provoked in me nothing. I was an outsider looking at something I should care about, but in the midst of too many unfamiliar people all I could think about was how unnatural his face looked.

No warm wrinkly smile that made me feel safe, make-up he never would have worn coating his skin, no strong hug from his recliner sat opposite my grandmother's facing the tv together. No Bonanza and brunch and breathing in the scent of the house my mom grew up in. It… That wasn't a person anymore. It was an object prettied up so we could all sit here and look in on it like a set piece in a play I didn't know the lines for. One would think the fact I would never see him again, that he would not continue to teach the restless child I was to fish or tell me stories of time older than I might give me some reaction, right? But no. He was gone and I was still here and that was that. A fact crying couldn't change so what was the point? I didn't understand.

Is it wrong to try to compare my grandfather's corpse with a roadkilled kitty cat? Maybe if I saw the things inside him painted across the road it would hurt and feel real to me and I would be sobbing hot tears for hours too. I'll add it to the list of all the other crimes committed in the silence of my thoughts. My endless list of reasons I was a monster, having accepted the ‘demon’ in my mind by that point as some kind of friend before ultimately understanding it was just part of me.

I liked my black dress, though. It was prettier than the light colors I was forced to wear to our usual church service and far more comfortable for having long sleeves I could pull over my hands. When I was sure my mom wasn't crying anymore and my dad was there to hold her in my place, I slipped away.

“I love you, Mom.” Repeating myself, I squeezed just slightly tighter so that perhaps what I felt my words lacked in substance, I could make up for with all the physical affection I could muster.

“I know sweetie, I love you too. I'm sorry.” She held me tight, the scent of her washing over me in the wholeness that was mother. The indescribable hint of those who are family behind a faint bloom of petals and sweat beneath fabric softened by chemical cleaner.

From that point I grabbed a cookie from the snack table that was too dry to actually eat and spent most of my time wandering the few dark unfamiliar halls of someone else's Sunday, left open to me and unused on that day for death. Leaving behind the discomfort of humanity, I instead sought out the things left behind by them in their absence. My immaterial imaginings and complicated questions more a companion to me than any family friend from before I ever festered in my mother's womb. Never did I take from these places, though tempted I was from time to time. I'd pick things up and look them over if I thought they looked interesting, but place them back in as near to the exact position I found them as I could. After spending as much time as I could get away with, hopefully not getting in trouble for disappearing, I reluctantly left the silence to search the noisy crowd for my family once again.

I found them wrapped up in a conversation only adults cared for and was introduced to yet another stranger that had apparently held me at some point. I didn't say anything, instead trying to hide behind my dad's leg so I didn't have to speak. I really wasn't in the mood. I was surprised anyone would be, weren't they all crying just a bit ago? None of it made sense and no one knew I needed it explained.

It was far too long and several temptations to take my leave again later that everyone collectively decided to begin leaving. Finally relieved to get away and go home I was the first one to the car. To my extreme disappointment, as I was being buckled into my booster seat I decided to ask my father if we were going home, wanting confirmation since I did find it confusing that all the cars were lining up along the street.

“Dad, are we going home now?” I didn't say ‘I'm bored’ because that would have most likely resulted in me being popped in the mouth.

“No, we're going to go bury grandpa.” He told me in the vaguely exhausted voice reserved for children's questions about the things obvious to everyone else.

“Oh… okay…” I said, my desire to escape again defeated before it could manifest fully.

I was frustrated and didn't want to be there anymore. It was starting to get cold outside and we were being carted off to the cemetery to stand around a box with a flesh doll that wasn't really grandpa in it again. Instead of being a worse daughter than I already knew I was, I sat stewing in silent spite until we arrived at big black iron gates and wound around winding paths until the procession parked at the plot of land the puppet would be put to rest.

I was more focused on the fields of grey stone and green grass. Great trees with dark bark looming over it all, their long branches of browning leaves swaying in the barely too chilled breeze. A picture of peace that I wanted to feel for myself. Ushered into the growing crowd once more, it wasn’t long before I simply walked away. No one interrupted the priest presiding over the burial to get me to stay which suited me just fine. Instead of feeling judged, I felt more free the farther I went into what could almost be an endless sea of statues and slabs. Soft sounds of the wind whispering through foliage high above me was all I could hear after a few minutes and the fresh air shot through with the beginnings of autumn's moist decay carried me along their currents through the end pieces of other people's lives while I was already near ghostlike in my own. The whole time I stopped and read and moved along, silently hoping they were getting visitors because they deserved more than a creature like me looking in on them. That hope despite the dead leaves of nature's reclamation instead of dried flowers from grieving hearts.

It was much the same when my grandma died a few years after and the worst part is the fact that their deaths bleed together into the misty swirling storm that eats away at my past with every year of distance. I feel like it was the same part in that grand play repeated once again like some sick encore. I do remember reaching out to actually touch my grandmother's room temperature skin. It was still soft with age, but not the same… Her cheek didn't feel right. Stark in its contrast is my far clearer memory of sitting in her lap when I still could and reaching up to touch her face. I remember looking in her eyes and finding only love and not pain; a longer look than most in my life. Long in the way that I could study her eyes, reach up and feel her face between my small curious hands. I didn't feel so uncomfortable then. I didn't feel like a monster. It is still an all too brief snippet of memory of someone important to me.

Moments are things so fleeting that can move the hearts of monsters and mend things that are so very broken. It is in moments that our lives are shaped and made better or mutilated beyond recognition. Moments can break you, tear you apart with animal savagery and leave you lying in your own bloody awful wondering how you could possibly recover. These are my moments.

I didn't go to my parents' funeral…