I can’t exactly remember the first time I met my cousin Sarah. I do know that it was in that sad summer when I first moved to live with my Great Aunt. My parents had just been killed in an automobile accident and being an only child I was left an orphan. Thankfully I remember very little of that terrible time. It is still a series of confused images like in a kaleidoscope filled with real life impressions instead of the colorful random geometric patterns. I was moved from unknown relative to unknown relative until I somehow stood at the dirt and gravel driveway leading up to my Great Aunt’s house. I was nine years old, had been alone on a train for two days, had no money and had eaten very little. There I stood. The man who had brought me to the driveway simply stopped and pointed in that direction. I got out with my small cardboard suitcase. He closed the door and drove away. When the dust settled I walked slowly up the driveway. The trees lining the driveway were tall and thick and provided a cool shade. The house looks the same then as it does today. It is a single story wood frame farmhouse with a wide front porch that extends from front corner to corner. Two rocking chairs sit peacefully in its shaded recesses. They show many years of use. The house is very simple. It has four rooms and a covered extension on the back. You enter the front room from the porch. It is a parlor of sorts. Then, as now, it has two comfortable stuffed chairs, a couch, and an upright piano. Heat is provided from a cast iron potbellied stove. The room to the right is a bedroom. Here is a combination chest of drawers - vanity with mirror and clothes closet. An iron framed bed with a thick mattress, pillows, and quilts occupy the rest of the room. A door leads directly into the next room that also is a bedroom and similarly furnished. Each room has two windows. The room to the rear of the parlor and also accessible from the back bedroom is the kitchen. There is a simple and sturdy table with four straight-backed cane bottomed chairs. Wooden cabinets and drawers lined the walls. A black wood-burning cook stove occupied the left side. A wood box sat close by. At that time all the lighting was by kerosene lanterns. Now there are electric lights and modern plumbing. I still tend to remember it as it was. This was now to be my new home. As I walked up the three steps to the house an elderly woman stepped from the door. She wasn’t a large woman. The intensity of her dark brown eyes seemed to reveal knowledge of things past that would be best forgotten. She spoke little. A plate of biscuits was still warm on the stove. She quietly studied me. After I had eaten she took my young smooth hands into hers and pulled me close to her. I now knew I was finally home and everything would be all right. I quickly learned my way around the small farm. The outhouse was a proper distance from the house and kept very clean. A small barn was a distance further. Here resided two pigs, a milk cow and dozens of chickens. A large garden was located close by and I soon learned how much work was required for it to provide the majority of our food. There was always plenty to eat but one had to work for it. My Great Aunt was a patient and understanding woman. I don’t know what would have happened to me without her. I lived with her until I was drafted in 1964. I wrote several letters but never received a reply. Now I realize she couldn’t read or write. When I came back home five years later she was dead. Again, I don’t exactly remember the first time I met my cousin Sarah. It might have been in the barn, or perhaps on the porch. I just looked up one day and she was standing there. She was a slender dark haired girl, much the same age, and seemed to be curiously observing me. Her eyes were dark brown and she studied me in the same sort of way as my Great Aunt. I wasn’t shocked to see her standing there, just a little surprised. I had been at my new home for several weeks and no mention had ever been made of a cousin. Then a slight smile came to her small mouth. I stood and stepped toward her. At that moment my Great Aunt called for me so I looked away to answer and when I turned my head back Sarah was gone. Later that evening I told my Great Aunt about the girl I had seen. She again studied me closely and asked me to tell her everything. I did. She didn’t doubt what we both knew was true but she seemed to want to know everything I could remember. She sat quietly for a few minutes and appeared to be deep in thought. Then she said the little girl was my cousin Sarah and that she would visit me from time to time. We never spoke of her again. I met Sarah the next day in the barn. She stayed a while longer this time and seemed not to want to leave. She still had not spoken but did hum a childishly innocent nonsensical rhyme that was pleasant to hear. Her voice was soft but the notes were clear. Later on this became her way of her letting me know she was near. Sarah soon became my almost constant companion. As I grew older she accompanied me throughout the day and many times was close during the lonely nights. I never questioned who she was or where she lived, I was a lonely child and desperate for a friend. This she did for me. As time passed and we were together more I began talking to Sarah. Then she began to answer. I learned quickly not to press her with difficult or prying questions. She would withdraw and give me a sad gaze as if I had hurt her. I learned to accept her as she was. She never really answered in depth. It was usually a simple yes or no or more likely a nod of her head, but she was almost always humming her melodious notes. I don’t think she really wanted to be bothered with questions or answers. But her song was just her way of showing me that she was near. There was another day I still remember vividly. I was in the barn milking the cow. It was late in the fall. I had not heard or seen Sarah that day and being late in the afternoon that was unusual. Regardless, I spoke to her as if she was there. The softly, lightly, with a tender pressure as light as a feather, I felt something touch my upper arm. I turned my head and was face to face with Sarah. For the first time ever she had touched me. Her dark brown eyes were mere inches from mine. I was not startled, simply happy to see her. She gave me a faint half smile and eased back a discrete distance. She then began humming her melody. I finished the milking, and as I left the barn with the bucket of warm milk Sarah accompanied me to the steps of the house. I turned away from her to open the screen door and when I turned my head back she was gone. Later that evening as I lie in bed I knew that she again was near. She did not make a sound but again I felt the light brush of her hand on my arm. The bed gave very slightly as she sat next to me. I don’t know how long she remained but when I awoke later in the night she was gone. The fall eased into the winter, the winter into the spring, and then the spring again into the summer. Time passed, I grew older, and Sarah remained a companion. As I think back now she was as constant a presence as my consciousness. If I thought of her she was there. Whenever I experienced realization that I was not alone she was always there. Sometimes I saw her, other times there was her song, and then there was the light touch of her hand on my arm. I never tried to explain her presence to anyone except that one time already mentioned. She was my companion, she was always there, and that was all that mattered. As I previously had mentioned, I was drafted in the fall of 1964. There was a bus trip to Fort Benning, eight weeks later another bus trip to Louisiana, then my first plane ride ever to a place in Asia. I’d never heard of Vietnam much less have any idea of what the war was all about. I quickly learned it really did not matter. Today my memories of it is of a jumbled cacophony of strange small people, hot humid weather, odd looking farm animals, explosions and machine gun fire in the night, and a muffled roar as the mine I stepped on erupted beneath me. Then a hurried confused excitement as a medic was screaming and the searing pain as I was rolled in a poncho, dragged across a rice paddy with bullets smacking inches from my face, then being hauled up into a tossing jumping helicopter. There was another medic screaming in my ear as he tried to stop the gushing blood from what had been my right leg. When I woke up I was in a hospital, my right leg was missing, and I became addicted to morphine. Three weeks later I was in Japan, a month after that I was in a VA hospital in Alabama. I don’t care to recall the rest. As I previously said, it was five years before I was able to return to the old house. My Great Aunt was dead. She had been found sitting in one of the rockers on the porch. I only stayed a few minutes. I was as dead inside as she was dead to the world in which she had lived. I eventually recovered, received a prosthesis for my absent right limb, attended college, met a wonderful young lady and was married. We had two beautiful children who are now grown and living their own lives. After twenty-eight years of marriage my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, She died four months later. I don’t know why, but after a few months in the house I’d lived for over twenty years I knew I could not stay any longer. My children both lived in other states and I saw no reason to remain. I sold the house and adjoining property and moved back to the old farmhouse. I had it remodeled and it is now my home. It is quiet here. I like that. My needs are few and simple. I take long walks and am at peace with the world. Sometimes a recall of the violent experience of the explosion that nearly killed me shatters my serenity and I have to force myself not to enter the dark world I fought so desperately to escape. It’s a terrible place and I never want to go back again. Late one particularly upsetting day my personal demons seemed as if they were going to succeed. Maybe it was the pain, maybe the depressing weather. It had rained steadily all day. The constant pain was too bad to walk and I was too nervous to remain still. I finally compromised by sitting in one of the old rockers on the porch and steadily rocking back and forth. Even though I was fighting the oncoming depression with all my might it was slowly beginning to rise like an evil foul odor from a stinking swamp. I was losing the battle. I was powerless to stop it. Just as I was giving in to the horrible dark onset of depression I felt a familiar light touch on my arm. Feelings suddenly returned I had not experienced since I was a teenager. My senses were now fully alert. Then I felt it again. A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the sky and a deep roll of thunder followed. The rocking chair beside me began to gently rock to and fro. It was Sarah. I was not alone. She remained with me that entire evening. She made no sounds not allowed her self to be seen. But she let me know she was with me. As she had done so many years before, she sat next to me on my bed as I finally went to sleep. The last thing I remember was the slight pressure on the bed and her soft touch on my arm. I fell into a deep sleep. The morning came clear and bright. The rain had purged the air of the odors that were so threatening the night before. I rose, dressed, fixed breakfast, and ate in the familiar kitchen. As I sat down I noticed some of the kitchen items had been rearranged. I was momentarily confused until I realized they had been placed exactly where they had been over thirty years ago. I clearly remembered the cups were in the cupboard to the left of the sink and the plates and saucers had been stacked on the right side. The knives and forks were also rearranged and a picture had been moved to another wall. Sarah was home. She wanted things the way they were. Throughout the day I noticed several other changes. This was fine with me. Sarah again has become an almost constant presence. I sit with her, talk to her, and am simply satisfied to have her again as a companion. Sometimes late in the evening as I sit rocking on the porch I’ll quietly play my harmonica. It eases me. Sarah seems to enjoy the music and will hum along in her clear soft childish voice. I am happy here. I receive few visitors and would be satisfied with less. Sarah never comes when they are here. So I sit, I think, play my harmonica, and Sarah is always near. Yes, I know she is a ghost. I found her small tombstone next to my Great Aunt’s when I finally returned to the old house. She was only nine years old when she died in 1912. But she is with me again. For what more could I ask?
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 22:47:55 +0000
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