My daughter was asked to write a ghost story for her Fiction class, and she chose to write about my father. An Unexpected Visitor “Hey, daddy! What made you come by?” My mom answers the door, letting grandpa inside. “You’re awfully cold. Let me go make you some coffee.” It’s 6:00pm on a Wednesday, so I’m in my room getting dressed for church. On Wednesday’s, my brothers and I go to Awana, where we read the Bible and get prizes for memorizing passages. It’s also St. Patrick’s Day, so the prizes are supposed to be really good, and I’m excited to leave. I can hear my mom and grandpa talking downstairs, sounding a bit hysterical. “Carrie, you know I love you. I just don’t like the things you do,” I hear my grandpa say. My mom never made the best choices in life, so grandpa was always trying to make her see her mistakes. He always wanted to help out, and I admired him for that. “Daddy, what are you talking about?” Mom never knows what she’s done wrong. She never realizes when she’s made a bad decision. I hear her starting to cry, which means he must have told her what was wrong. “I won’t be around forever. You have to grow up.” He seems harsher than usual when he says this. I walk downstairs to make sure everything is alright, and find my mom sitting alone, crying. Grandpa must have gone. “Mommy, are you okay?” I always had to do this. I always had to pick up the pieces when she fell apart. Nobody else was going to, so the duty fell on me. My brothers were still at their friends’ house, so it was just the two of us. “Just go, Ashley. You need to get ready for church. The bus will be here any minute.” She turns away from me, as though to end the conversation. “Won’t you come with us? Just this once?” I beg her as I have every Wednesday since I started going to Awana. “It could be good for you.” “This is not the time. Just finish getting ready.” That’s the end of it. She never gives in. Not even a little. It kills me because I know she needs it. Just once, I wish she would come with us. Just so we could look like a normal family. The bus pulls in and my brothers are already on it. “Mom, please just come with us.” I implore one last time. She walks away, wordlessly, and I get on the bus. My brothers ask what’s wrong with mom, and I just shake my head. I know she’s upset over the visit from grandpa, and I needn’t be too hard on her. Once we arrive at church, we go to the main building for prayer before breaking up into classes. When I walk in, I see grandpa sitting in the back row, and go to sit beside him. “What are you doing here?” I ask. “I thought you went back home.” “I just needed to talk to you,” he says, “about your mother.” I lean in and ask what’s going on, but he doesn’t tell me. “I need you to take care of her. She needs you. Your brothers don’t understand, but you do. Just take care of her.” I look up at him to ask why, but he just puts his hand up and walks away. When I go to sit next to my brothers, Tyler whispers, “Who were you talking to?” I look at him as if he’s a complete idiot, but the prayer begins before I can answer. Throughout church, I find it difficult to concentrate. I keep asking myself what was going on; why would I need to take care of my mother? Nonetheless, I memorize my verses and end up winning the prize, a St. Patrick’s themed wind catcher. When the bus lets us off at home, I run inside to hang my prize above my bed. I’ve completely forgotten about my conversation with grandpa, and I go to apologize to my mom. When I walk into her room, she’s on the phone, sobbing. All she says is, “That’s not possible.” She repeats it over and over, like a chant. “That’s just not possible.” When I move in closer, I hear my grandma on the other end. “It happened this afternoon,” she says between sobs, “he had a heart attack.” Then it hits me. Grandpa. Something happened to him. But it couldn’t have been this afternoon…I just saw him an hour ago. There’s been some mistake. I go back to my room, and try to make sense of things, when I hear a knock on the door. My brother opens the door and says that our stepdad needs to see us all in the living room, so I go. We’re all sitting on the couch when he walks in and says, “Your grandfather has passed away.” “You’re lying! I just saw him at church!” I turn towards Tyler, “Remember? You asked who I was talking to.” Tyler just stares back at me and says that I had been sitting alone. But, I think, that’s just not possible. Mom saw him too. I stand up and go to my mom’s room. “Mom? It’s not true, is it? I just saw him at church.” She just looks up at me, and stares blankly. She doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying. “Mom. I just saw him. Tell me it isn’t true.” She turns away, and only says one thing: “He said he wouldn’t be here forever.” It’s in that moment that I understand what he meant. He won’t be here to take care of her, so I have to. I lean in and she wraps her arms around me, and I can feel her tears drenching my shirt.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 03:31:13 +0000
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