After Life

I died on a Wednesday. I know this because it was definitely Tuesday when I first took ill. I awoke to intense pain in my stomach, with high fever and chills following soon after. Must be food poisoning I surmised, though there occurred no disgusting but relieving discharge out any of the usual spots. The next morning, I summoned what concentration and energy I could muster to call for an ambulance. Within the few coherent moments that remained while in the emergency room I heard the doctor order immediate surgery for a gastrointestinal perforation with arrythmia. Flat on a gurney with the lights above speeding past, all lapsed to black.

Odd that my next lucid thought was it must be at least Saturday, and not that I now stood in a cemetery fully dressed in my blue suit. A short distance in front of me I recognized the backs of my closest family members, Mother, Father, brother Steven, his wife Maura, and their little boy Ethan. They stood in a line facing a priest, his back to a brown coffin resting atop a short rectangular stand, clearly intoning, “Dearly beloved we are gathered here to lay to his final rest son and brother Robert James Haddon.” 

“That’s my name, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.” I absurdly thought to myself – but why not?  Apparently, I was witnessing my own funeral. Who wouldn’t crack just a little? Must be Saturday I surmised. A funeral any sooner would be difficult, and any later verged on unseemly.

I shook out the stupor and placed an index and middle finger on my pale wrist and felt for a pulse and registered no beats. An attempt at a deep breath proved fruitless as my chest felt frozen stiff. I bit down on my tongue. No pain, no blood.

The priest was in the midst of an appropriate bible reading as I stumbled to face this small group. With the first step I noted electrical jolts of pain in my feet, slowing my strides. I also recognized my vison was veiled in an odd haze. Circling to face my family their features lacked sharpness, like I was looking through thin gauze.

My presence was not noticed, despite standing mere feet away, though each pulled their topcoats tighter together. To my left stood Father, taciturn as always, with features set as firmly as if cut along with the statues on Easter Island. Mother, with the far-off gaze of a person mired deep in thoughts too personal to share. Steven – never Steve – with his cool looks and sharp features, probably trying to remember if he had set the recording of the football game. Maura next to him, her previously fair countenance now beginning to exhibit a dullness brought on by motherhood and approaching middle age. All showed the pretense of giving their attention to the priest who neared the climactic end of the burial service – except for little Ethan. Before I had walked to face my family, the rambunctious 3-year-old swayed and jumped with irritation at this boring event, and Maura, with little success, had attempted to still his movements. When I finally looked upon him, he now clutched his mother’s leg like a koala bear hugging a tree truck, whimpering, and his wide-eyed wet gaze squarely fixed at me. His parents surely explained that Uncle Robert was gone and would never be seen again, but here I stood, and he alone could see me, yet what help could that snot-nosed waif do me at this moment?

The surreal scene continued. Two workmen appeared and activated the hidden lowering system as the priest intoned, “Ashes to ashes; Dust to dust.” Down the coffin sank deep into the rectangular hole.

My head swiveled between grave and family. Not a wail, or tear, nor comment came from or passed between them. Once the casket vanished from sight my father performed an about-face, and with the rest following suit, this dysfunctional family marched away with only Ethan, now carried by Maura, warily staring me down as they disappeared over a little knoll.

Inexplicable, horrifying, and soul crushing. Had I a soul? Was I now just my soul? A week prior I was relatively happy and healthy. Now here I stood: Invisible, no heartbeat to feel thrumming anxiously in my chest, no breath with which to scream. I am a ghost. My bodily functions died on that gurney, but my mind carried on. This curious Twilight Zone scenario dissolved into despair. With no idea how to overcome and proceed I could only stand a silent vigil as a small bulldozer filled in my grave and after the workmen departed, I stretched out a top the freshly turned dirt and hoped to, what? Die for real?

There I lay. A slab of depression covering me as heavy as the weight of the dirt bearing down on my crypt six feet under me. What options did I possess? I sprawled there as day became night and visa-versa. During that span not a single workman going about his tasks, nor mourners paying respects to loved ones, gawked or exclaimed at the pale figure stretched motionless across a fresh grave. Neither did I experience discomfort from the cold, damp nights, nor endure hunger or thirst, and nary a spider or ant scurried across my form. I was truly invisible to the outside world. While I did believe there were greater things in heaven and earth than thought of in our aspect, Horatio, I was not the religious sort. However, here atop my bones final resting place, after countless days of despondency, I began to pray for a solution or release. Was this Hell? To be punished for eternity trapped in solitude? I should think not, I countered. For that is how I came to live my life. Father was distant and Mother, while attentive, fought her own struggles with what her life became compared with what she dreamt for herself. Steven and I were polar opposites, so no closeness evolved there. I had my share of friends and romantic interests, but all fell away as I found tedious the daily wants and needs of a frivolous world. Therefore, I built a castle in my own mind and resided there in solitude. Safe but not content. Walls are rarely built to keep people in, but to keep people out. My walls kept emotions out and did so quite successfully.

The old saying is that life passes before your eyes when you die, but now I experienced this phenomenon as a dead person. As I lay there pondering the truths of my short existence, images, like an old-fashioned slide show, began tracking through my mind. Scenes of success and failure, contentedness and sadness rushed by like a swift current with each emotional impact of those moments passing with its own hue – lighter shades equaling the joyful, darker reds allied with the sorrowful. Through it all I accompanied this frame-accurate story of my life with the many forms of grief, so that when the final images faded away as mysteriously as they began, I silently wailed away my anguish for I had no breath to scream, no tears to shed.

When my sorrow had somewhat subsided, I concluded it was time to discover of what my predicament was actually made. I determined to leave this boneyard and investigate the vestiges of my life. As I trudged the direction my family departed those many days past, I encountered a thin old man standing astride a low tombstone clearly shaking his head in some distress. I say clearly because this elderly gent, unlike my family and the surroundings, stood in sharp clarity, not shrouded in a thin mirky haze. He did not look up as I approached, and I was surprised to make out a raspy desperate whisper, “Where? Sally where?”

I examined the names on the gravestone.

Walter F. Barstow 1919-2012

Sarah J. Barstow 1922-2008

I attempted to form words of my own, but without lungs full of air I could not accomplish such an action. I shook his boney shoulder, but he did not abandon his trance. “Where?” He softly croaked again.

Was this old man, dressed in a loose-fitting suit, wispy white hair and sallow grey pallor, Walter? No attempts prevailed in breaking his spell, the continual shake of the head and the same woeful litany continued. If this was the late Walter had he been standing here for twelve years lamenting his Sally? And if he truly haunted this spot since his funeral, then where was she?

I continued on towards the front of the cemetery and now I did notice other solitary figures in sharp relief against a backdrop of gauze, standing forlornly like forgotten ancient pillars. My predicament was not solely my own it seemed, but there appeared to be a small percentage compared to the true number of deceased buried here over the decades, so there must be an alternative I hoped.

I passed between the open gates at the bottom of the hill that fronted the town in which I had resided my whole life, where residential neighborhoods surrounded a small downtown. Past the entrance I encountered an elderly lady walking a small dog. I decided to attempt an important test. I cleared all thoughts as I strode purposely towards her and without any sensation past directly through her body like a breeze blowing amidst the leaves. Looking behind me I caught the woman in mid shudder and the dog fighting against its leash in an attempt to scurry another direction. She composed herself and her dog and walked on. I could morph through objects I guess, and the living apparently registered my presence in close contact.

Ignoring the aches in my feet and legs that reverberation with every step like drumbeats, I arrived at my humble first floor apartment. With a touch of static shock, I turned the doorknob and found it locked. Frustration gave way to realization: I could walk without melting down through the dirt and rock below me. I could grab doorknobs, and I could pass through people. Did my perception operate on two levels of existence? Still getting accustomed to this ghost thing, and there was one way to find out. First, I imagined myself and the front door as equal objects, strode purposely forward, and banged into the solid wood surface. Next, as I did with the old woman, I cleared my mind and strode through the door into my apartment.

The shock of being back home topped the feeling of now being immune to the natural laws of corporeal beings. I had been alive when last here. Now I was a spirit haunting my empty home. My family had cleaned the place out. Boxes of clothes and items collected over a lifetime off to the Salvation Army or the dump. Depression blanketed me again.  I am dead but trapped with the living. What was I to do? Where could I go?

“Leave behind your life and all will be forgotten,” a cool voice from nowhere and everywhere entreated me.

Since I died, I had experienced the array of emotions concerning that truth except one: Fear. Now I could check that off the list. Dulcet as the voice seemed, I perceived an undercurrent of command in the guidance. Also, why now and from whom am I receiving support?

“Leave behind your life, and all you have desired will come to pass.” The voice offered. This time more slowly, similar to the tone Maura took to convince that brat Ethan to obey.

I was tempted despite my misgivings. Stranded here alone with my only distractions giving living people the shudders and passing through solid objects, or moving on to the “great beyond” or whatever might come next? I could not, however, shake the sensation that this offer struck a hollow note. ‘Leave behind your life’ verged on careless abandonment. In my journey to the apartment, I crossed paths with many spirits, and all appeared to be in personal conflicts. Frustration, anger, and sadness clouding their pale faces while gesturing madly. Many silent screams, with a scant few emanating hoarse whispers of confusion and fear. I witnessed many ghostly suicidal plunges off high rooftops repeated as if on a loop like a gruesome Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland.

Internalizing all that combined with this ominous voice planted a firm belief that I now existed in some sort of purgatory, and there was a price to pay or correct action to take to pass through this plane, and to accept this offer landed more in the ‘price to pay’ scenario, which felt like the wrong choice. Without responding I turned heel and materialized back onto the street. The sun sat low in the skyline. I would be at my childhood home by dusk.

Beaver Cleaver could have grown up in this house. Built in the post-war boom with a dining room, separate parlor, and three bedrooms. Father inherited the place and never felt the need to modernize, so the house maintained a mid-century quaint.

I materialized into the parlor, sat on the old couch and soaked in all the memories that I had neglected to commemorate while still breathing: Games of checkers. Frozen dinners on trays while watching one of Father’s shows. The few dates I had in high school beginning here on this couch with nervous small talk or ending here with tentative kisses. Huddling as a youngster with Steven while our parents argued upstairs. A lot of life spent in this parlor, and maybe, despite Father’s aloofness, and Mother’s chagrin, and Steven’s bullying, life wasn’t so bad. I felt marginalize much of the time, but every opportunity for health and happiness was provided. My parents had their own issues which seeped out and curdled our relationships, but they did the best they could I suppose.

At that thought an idea softly planted itself in my mind like delicate rose stem. 

“Accept your life and all is forgiven.”

Another mysterious urging. However, this time I felt no undercurrent of force or disdain. Only a sense to abide. 

 Still, I answered to one other insistence. Moving left out of the parlor I began walking upstairs. As it had always been, even under the footfalls of my spirit form, the stairs soon creaked. After the second groan of a step, Father popped his head out from the doorway at the top of the landing and peered about. 

“Mary?” he inquired.

I continued on slowly, taking one more step. That new creak moved his attention my way. His next uncertain query caught me off guard.

“Bobby?”

Father always appeared to be a sober, no-nonsense man, never showing any belief or curiosity in anything past the tip of his nose. Maybe he believed in the afterlife, or with his youngest in the ground he now hoped such a thing was possible. I knew of no other way to answer his question than to take another step. Slowly and deliberately, I pushed down on the next landing to draw out the creak as long as the old wood allowed.

Receiving a possible response, Father stood ram rod straight and his normally sullen eyes flared. I kept still as well. What direction would this complex person take? At the last this sedate, serious old man chose to not believe. His jaw set tightly, his eyes narrowed, and he retreated into the room shutting the door just like he always closed off his mind. Sad, but not unexpected. Momentarily encouraging, but I had no concept of how to approach Father – in death just like in life. 

I fervently wished to get to Mother. I was a “Momma’s Boy” for good and bad. She had been caring, and her unpredictable moods were challenging, but with time I understood. Married too young to a much older man, with pregnancy placing her dreams aside. She struggled with what her young, hopeful life became.

The aches and fatigue continued as I mounted the steps. Must be a physical connection with the real world I surmised. It was then I compared walking to my newfound movement through solid objects and instantly willed myself to the upper landing. So stupid not putting that easy puzzle together sooner!

I could hear soft sounds emanating from my old room which sent a twinge though my otherwise motionless heart. I glided to the doorway and inside Mother stood clad in her night coat, back to the door, chin on her chest, shoulders convulsing in muted sobs. Through the blur that was my perception of the living world I watched her shudder and moan softly and continuously within her private grief. Before entering I looked towards the direction of Father two rooms over and wondered if he comforted her or had ever soothed her in all its possible meanings. She had done her best as a mother and wife. What more could one ask? Now she had buried a child. What would be more heart wrenching? 

 If I had been capable of a deep breath, I would have done so as to muster all the supernatural strength my ghostly form might conjure, for this act would require human energy. I enveloped her in a soft embrace, my mouth close to her ear, and I confided in a yell hoping she would hear and understand my whisper, “I love you. And I accept my life.”

 I stepped away and observed her now. She stood straight and silent for long moments, then she inhaled deeply, and after a pause, slowly released a long, cleansing breath. The shudders had abated, and her head tilted upwards, whispering her own private praises. I too turned my gaze up to the ceiling and beyond proclaiming, “I accept my life!” and all became clear and ever brighter.