Parting with the Ghost

I’ve had to give up so much for my wife, so she could continue the hope that one day the ghost would come back. Each time she swears it will be the last time, but here she is again, lighting the candles and setting up everything to keep the ghost here; if she comes at all.  It began again this morning. I woke to a house not filled with the smells of breakfast, nor the sounds of any hobbies being practiced.  I found her alone in the study. She had unearthed faded photographs from the attic. Paper time capsules of smiling faces. Normally old photos have a way of providing warmth to a room, but these sucked all of the warmheartedness from the air, and replaced it with ice.

“She sent me a message again, last night,” she whispered.

“Is that so?” 

The ice crept into my skin and made it’s home in my bones. I knew what this meant.

“We didn’t have the right access to all the things she needed to come back for good,” she puts down the parcels of hope, and stands to face me.  

The love and hope in her eyes is too much for me, attempting to be casual I turn and pretend to examine the books on our bookshelf. Next to them is a tiny romantic placard we had got on a road trip when we were first married. It said, “Where you go I go.” Not turning around, I ask, “What if we get out of here this weekend, drive up the coast. We’ll live off food from farmer's markets. We have so many books you haven’t read yet. I’ll drive, and you could spend the whole trip with your nose in a book.”

She shakes her head and then I see them. She already has a pile of books that she has been obsessing over, behind her they sit and I imagine them to be like a tiny gravestone of the woman I was once married to. The titles range from “How to find the courage to live with your ghost” and “Seven ways you can make having a ghost in the family more productive.”  

For a second I imagine the rough sand against my back and the soft wet skin of my wife, baking on the beach after a long swim. That was nearly ten years ago we had our last real vacation. Ten years now that we’ve been living with the ghost, who comes and goes with not so much as a care for the living.

I turn back and with the last ounce of love I have left in me, I wrap my arms around her, she knows I will help her.

Now the house is filled with incense, the kind the ghost likes. It smells like strawberry-scented body odar to me. Next, all the electronics must be hidden, and hidden well. One look at a cell phone is enough to cause the ghost to go into a rage, claiming those devices could be used to trap her. Even the television has to be covered up with a blanket or the ghost swears she can hear voices. Voices that call her through the screen, voices that want to harm her.  

The hours tick by, and still the ghost does'nt manifest. As the sun dips outside an eerie glow is cast on the shell that used to be my house. I barely recognize it. There are weird crystals on my furniture, these are supposed to make the ghost feel more comfortable.

As a joke I pick up the large square container out of the kitchen that holds our kosher salt, and I pretend to go up to the doorway to sprinkle a line at the threshold, this is a mistake. My wife loses it, she begins crying and shouting. 

“Really! Are you kidding me!”

“What? I was just trying to lighten the mood,” I know I should stop, let it go, but from under my breath I hear myself, “Jeez, if only it was that easy to keep her out.” 

That's all it takes, my wife goes full tornado on me. She grabs the incense and stamps on it till it is nothing but burnt ash on the floor, then she grabs a trash can and violently starts smashing all the good luck charms she’d been putting up around the house. She shouts not at me, but at herself.”

“Fine! Fine, fine.”

Crap, I didn’t want this. My wife is my world. Before she can demolish all her hard work, I step in front of her and act like a human wall. She refuses to look at me, I don’t blame her. This isn’t her fault, she didn’t ask for this. You can’t choose the ghost that haunts you. The silence between us goes on for hours, but we put everything back up, and wait.  

I had just gotten used to the melody of the ticking clock, when a tap and a knock came from the front door. My wife jumps up, she smiles at me. It is a frail smile, years of battling had taken the energy required to form a full and bright smile. She really has the most beautiful smile, even a half-hearted one. She picks up something she had been hiding behind a wedding picture.

“What’s that?”

“It's a necklace that I’ve been saving. I am going to give it to her so she knows we want her to feel safe here.”  

I examine it for a half-second, it is a gold chain with the word sisters written on a tiny round circle attached to it.

“It beautiful.” 

 I kiss her on the forehead and watch her shuffle to the door. She swings the door open, it’s dark, but I can see well enough to know that this is not the silhouette of the ghost. This is the silhouette of a police officer.

I can’t hear their conversation from here, but I don’t need to be a telepath to know what's coming. What has finally come. Instinctively, I rush up behind my wife, just in time to catch her as she collapses. 

I invite the officer in and we sit at the kitchen table, my wife is now as white as the porcelain plates she has set out for dinner. The officer explains how the ghost was found, and that the cause of death was ruled a suicide.  

There is little I can do for my wife over the next two weeks, but I feel the ice melt with each day that passes. The day to say our last goodbye to the ghost comes. There are not many people here to say goodbye, and those that are here have little to say. Flowers are spread across the wet grass, and I hold my wife's hand as we walk away from the final resting place for her sister. I expect her to keep looking back, but she doesn’t turn around, not even once. We get in the car, and I just want to make the beautiful woman I married whole again.

“We can come back next week and check on the flowers, if you want.”

“No. That's ok, I’m never coming back here.”

“Really are you sure?”

For several minutes she is still. So still I worry she’s not breathing, but everything about her is calm; every line on her face soft.

“You were right you know. My sister was gone along time before this, but I had to try to help her. Schizophrenia is not something she chose,” she reaches over and grabs my hand, the warmth from her hand feels amazing.  

“I know your nickname for her; the ghost,” she tries to make eye contact, but I pretend the air condition suddenly needs tinkering with

 “ I felt like if I could get her on the medication, if I could make her see how much I loved her that it would be enough. Lots of people have this mental disorder and get better. I don’t blame you for calling her that, you had to find a way to cope through all this.”

I didn’t need to ask her again if she wanted to come back to visit the grave. We both felt the same way about death, and we did not expect a reunion of any sort. In a way, that made the loss both so much harder and so much easier. My wife used every ounce of her energy trying to save the sister she knew, when there was something to save, but now that she was gone. It was for good. And she could really let go.

I turned the car on and put in the navigation for home, but my wife deleted it. Then she punched in coordinates for a farmers market that was five hours away up north. 

“Do you think we can find the same place we stayed at ten years ago?” she asked.

I would have smiled, but I was too busy trying not to cry.  

                                                                 The End