Since I was a little girl, I’ve always loved anything to do with ghosts.
I soaked up every word of the scary stories told around the campfire at Girl Scout camp. I read every one of Kathryn Tucker Wyndham’s books of spooky tales. I saw “Poltergeist” with my mom and cousins at the theater when I was fourteen - scared the crap out of me. I’ve been on ghost walk tours in Gettysburg and Savannah, and have stayed in purportedly haunted inns in several states. If I flip by a ghost-themed “reality” program on TV, I’m probably going to watch it.
Do I truly believe in ghosts? Well, yes I guess I do. But you shouldn’t ever expect to find me prowling through cemeteries or old abandoned buildings looking for things that go bump in the night. Some things are better left alone – by me at least.
But I realized last week that we have a ghost of our own.
Even all these months later, I still get occasional “glimpses” of Mark.
I clean out a closet in our guest room and find never-opened box of learning CDs that arrived after we last saw him.
I pull out one of my cutting boards to chop up some veggies for a salad and his Sesame Street placemat tucked in behind it falls onto the floor.
I go out into the backyard and the empty sandbox I usually don’t see jumps right out at me.
I walk past his room and my eyes go to the chair still sitting beside his bed, waiting for me to tuck him in, read him stories, and sing him to sleep. Oh how I loved singing him to sleep.
I go to change my tablecloth and underneath, the plastic liner protecting the table is stained by paint and markers from our daily art projects.
I drive past the billboard advertising the huge kids’ clothing consignment sale coming up and remember the last one, where I nearly filled the trunk of my car with clothes for him, and how cute he looked in them.
I look at my car’s passenger side window and if the light is just right, I can still see his little grimy fingerprints. I can’t bring myself to clean them off.
I open the desk drawer that’s filled with this year’s photos and quickly slam it shut like there’s a rattlesnake waiting to strike.
And this past Friday as I was cleaning my kitchen floor, I found a teeny tiny bit of orange construction paper, cut months ago by Mark and his brand new safety scissors and hiding somewhere all this time, waiting to steal my breath away for just a moment.
I don’t know how to rid our home of this particular ghost - if I can or if I’d even want to. But I do know that these glimpses of his “presence” aren’t getting any easier.
I wish he was here – flesh and blood. I think I always will.
