Kill me...again

I've never understood why people thought being a ghost was so bad. You never get wrinkles, you can float through walls and you get to watch over your loved ones. Sure, you can't speak to them or touch them, but you get used to it and I guess it's better than nothing. But in this moment, being here while no one could hear my screams felt like my own personal hell.

Sorry, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Enitan, I’m 5’11 and exactly 4 years ago I had a heart attack on my Egyptian cotton 600 thread count sheets and died. I don’t remember much about my actual death; all I remember was thinking damn I am comfortable and then suddenly my body was tired of having me as a tenant and I was evicted with no notice. I stood there for almost an hour watching my lifeless body before my husband came in and found me. Okay, that day was bad. So were the days that followed. I’ve never really been a crier but hell my husband was. He was a fountain for a couple of months there. It was endearing, he’d pick up something I had touched or looked at and cry, he’d walk into our room and cry, he’d smell my perfume and cry. Watching him mourn brought out a weird feeling in me. It was mostly sadness but with a hint of pride. Almost like his intense mourning was indicative of what a good person I had been or of how much he loved me. So, when he slowly stopped crying, I took it as a personal slight.

There’s no therapy in the afterlife and I admit that I'm not a perfect person, well nonperson, so this was hard to get over. The rational part of my mind was telling me that he had to move on and I should want him to be happy. But seeing that happiness only made me want to throttle him. How dare he smile when his beloved wife was gone and never to return? But once the rational part of my brain won its battle being a ghost became a bit mundane but not so bad. I spent my days wandering around the house, watching my husband live his life and when that got boring spying on the neighbours. They are usually fun to watch. If they weren’t arguing, they were bitching about the other neighbours or people from work. It became my very own TV show to keep me company when my husband was sleeping or at work; everyone needs entertainment, even ghosts.

Now back to my screams. I got up the same time last year expecting to see another rendition of my husband mourning his dead wife on the anniversary of her death. His usual routine involved visiting my grave and then coming home covered in sadness to cry. Usually full-blown sobs. But last year, I watched him get out of the car walk over to the other side and open the door for some random woman. Now I’m not stupid I know he started dating around the 2-year mark, I hissed and barked but again eventually the rational side of my brain won out and I knew that he was just looking for companionship or at the very least companionship that his hands were no longer able to give. I dealt with it. It also helped that I had never met any of the women he dated. But this one was walking towards my front door with her hand on my husband’s shoulder. The shoulder I used to fall asleep on during long movies. The shoulder I used to trace over when we would talk about how many kids we wanted. My shoulder. At first, I thought she was probably just helping him mourn but then she stuck around month after month with her hand never far from his shoulder. My shoulder.

The sobbing I can deal with, it’s usually sad but a little endearing but watching this evokes another level of sadness. One that I didn’t know I could feel as a dead person. I learned quickly in my death that intense emotions were not left in the land of the living, but the sight of this woman brought about a concoction of emotions I hadn’t felt since I met my husband. A mix of sadness, hot anger and heavy betrayal. The last time I felt this was when I caught my college boyfriend sending dick pics to half my dorm. The only difference is this time I don’t really have the right to feel betrayed. I was dead. I left him. I screamed, I cried and I wanted to smash his window or his head but all I could do was watch. I watched as he moved on and she moved in, I watched as he made her breakfast every morning and I watched as he proposed to her and she said yes; my only comfort being that her ring was smaller than mine.

And that brings me to today, probably the busiest day these walls have seen since my death but I’m stuck here staring out of the window of my bedroom into the garden watching my husband get married to another woman. I was losing the man that I loved and there was nothing I could do; no way I could fight for him. I just had to sit back and watch my nightmare happen right in front of my eyes. I tried to close my eyes, I really tried but at the end of the day my masochism won against any sense of self-preservation I had. My eyes were glued to him, the love of my life playing the same part he played at our wedding 8 years ago. Roles we both promised to play only once in this lifetime. At least I kept my end. The smell of strange flowers filled my nose. Hydrangeas. We had lilies at our wedding because they symbolised love and purity, but mainly because they were both of our favourite flowers. Or so I thought. I guess I don’t know this version of him that likes hydrangeas. But a rogue voice in my head whispered, “It’s probably her favourite flower”. I pursed my lips at the thought honestly not quite sure which reality was worse.

The wedding started and I heard each gut-wrenching promise they made to each other; to love and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do them part. If I wasn’t dead already, I think that would be the moment that I’d clutch my heart and fall to the ground. A death by immense heartbreak. I watched him place a ring on her finger and right then I realised the contract he had with me was null and void not because he couldn’t keep loving me in death but because death parted us in a way that was too immeasurable. That’s when I felt the first tear fall down my cheek, the first of the monsoon of tears that soon arrived. The man that I love is no longer mine. At that moment, I couldn’t help but weep; all I could do was cry because it dawned on me that for them life had just begun but mine had truly ended.