A Final, Desperate Entreaty

This house was mine first, don't you see? My husband built it from nothing, and together we made it a home. We brought up our children here. We fought here. We made love here. And yes, I died here. It was a mistake, truly. My husband wasn't like that all the time. He had had been laid off and it was the depression, no one was hiring. The stress of having four hungry mouths to feed weighed on him so heavily you could see the bow in his back deepen every day. The odd jobs he managed to pick up here and there weren't enough to pay the bills and take care of a family, and our savings were nearly gone. 

I did what I could. We raised chicken in the back yard and went in on a cow with a couple neighbour families. I grew vegetables from scraps and mended clothes so well you could barely tell they were little more than rags at that point. I was a good wife and a good mother. I did my duty to my family. But when my husband came home drunk one night, none of those things mattered anymore. Suddenly I was a useless burden, we all were, and I bore the full weight of his rage so my children wouldn't have to. 

I can't tell you why I didn't move on because I don't know myself. All I know is that at first I was naive enough to think it was a blessing in disguise, that God had made me an angel to watch over my family. But I quickly learned that watching was all I was able to do. It was all I could do as my husband's despair turned towards the children when he'd come home from whatever menial labour he could find. It was all I could do when my beloved's attitude suddenly changed to something much softer and gentler, explained a few weeks later when he brought her home. I watched her play house with my family as if with a set of inherited dolls, for that was what seemed appropriate to someone her age. I watched my husband get shipped off to war, and I watched her leave to work in factories every day instead of taking care of the house like a responsible mother-like-figure. How dare she come into my home and then skirt her responsibilities like that? How dare she play she play at being wife and mother on the grave of my legacy without even a drop of conviction? And worst of all, I watched my children love that vile woman. I even watched Anne, my darling little Anne who was only a tot when I passed, come to call her 'mom'. 

That was when I first learned that I was not an angel, but a ghost. Desperation becomes a tangible thing with enough power to even transcend death, and I wielded it with all my might. I wanted my children to remember me. I wanted my husband to feel guilty. I wanted her to fear my presence, that I might be watching her, judging her, haunting her. It worked. Too well, in fact. They moved– on to a new house, a new life. I did not. Instead, a new family moved in to my home, where I was stuck with visceral anger and the authority to slam doors and brush things off of countertops. It did not take long to get rid of them, and watching them pack that moving truck brought me the first satisfaction I'd had since dying. I thought it would be enough.

And then you came. 

You, with your modernity and your civil rights and your microwave oven. You, without a husband or children, but a full-time job and a pathetic little dog that looked about two steps away from death itself. You reminded me of her, but there was something worse about you. Something sadder. Where was your pride as a woman? Where was the meaning in your existence? If I had been alive I would have stood and laughed in the face of your choices, but all I could do was haunt. Your life made my rage every more powerful, and I learned to do things I wished I could have done while my husband still lived in the house. Pushing someone down the stairs, for instance. Damn you for surviving that. 

For all intents and purposes, I should have been able to win against you. I never thought such a modern woman would call in a priest to perform an exorcism, of all things, as if I were the devil incarnate and not just a bitter ex-housewife trying to protect her home. I hate that I've become like you, a nightmare of independence and solitude, able to deal with problems on my own now. If I had been more like this while I was alive, would I never have died? Was it my fault? The wondering has been excruciating, and the pain twisted me into something even more powerful, something I never imagined I could become. Is that how it was for you? Does your loneliness make you feel powerful? Did it hurt, swallowing your pride and calling in a man to get rid of me? I might have respected you more if you'd stayed true to your backwards lifestyle and found a way to deal with me yourself, but then again, I just might have killed you.

In these final moments, I find myself wishing for something with all the power and might I've accrued these years as a ghost. I hope you know the horror of being haunted by the living, forced to watch as life moves on and you stay stuck, frozen in place while time moves around you as a river eddies around a stubborn stone. I wonder if someone cursed me as I curse you, and that's how I ended up in this hellish purgatory. Well, then may you go on to curse the next woman who makes you watch your death become trivial and your life obsolete. May the cycle continue.