Gone But Still Here

Being dead is weird. I still exist, I think, but people can’t see me. I like to move things around, little things like throwing rocks near birds or blowing the top off a dandelion, just to remind myself that I’m really still here. I wish other people would know that too. People got over my death pretty quickly, some of them did before I even died. I was gone for a while, a few years probably, before I finally got to go. That’s what I call dying because I felt dead long before it actually happened. One can hardly call wasting away, hardly able to speak, and completely unable to stand being alive. Now, I don’t even get to rest. I have no clue what I was thinking as I left, or if I was thinking anything coherent at all, but apparently, I have unfinished business. I just wanted to leave, wanted the suffering to end, but now I’m here, flying above the intersection of 21st and Lyall, trying to beat some birds in a race. Maybe my unfinished business is finding something better for my immortal soul to wear than a tattered pirate costume. I was so proud of it as I put it on, my mom had helped me make it for a party, but after wearing it for five years, I’m well and truly sick of it. The before memories attached to it are bittersweet: home, being happy, drinking hot chocolate with my mom at ten pm as we worked on it, dancing with my friends, all things that I desperately missed. The after memories aren’t nearly as pleasant: being starved, alone, cold, scared, bleeding, bruised, trying to wipe up puss or do something to clean my wounds, wiping tears off my face, being covered in filth, everything I just want to forget. I wish I could just get on with my afterlife.

Now here I am, stuck looking at all of the reminders of my past. I’d wanted to try traveling, planes cost a lot less when you’re dead, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I don’t want to accept that life has moved on without me, but it has. My parents are even moving on. I have a baby sister now, she just turned two. I wish I got to be there for her, or just be there at all, but I’m not much of anything anymore, just a memory that’s faded from every mind but my own. She’s really cute though, she likes to throw her yellow ball and watch it bounce. Sometimes, when mom and dad aren’t looking, I like to throw it back. I think she likes it, her face always lights up and she falls over in a giggling fit. Hearing her babble on, the way she says complete gibberish as though it means everything in the universe, is a treat. Language is a massive puzzle, and through quite a bit of trial and error, she’s putting it together. Her two favorite pieces are “ball” and “bong”, the latter of which I’m assuming means the sound the ball makes when it bounces and not the other thing. She’s started walking too. Her little steps always seem so certain, right up until her tiny baby legs give out and she falls flat on her rear. I try to hold her up so she doesn’t fall, or at least make sure the fall doesn’t hurt, but interacting with the living is hard. I’m not supposed to, no dead people are, since life and death is meant to stay separate. Close, sure, but not together. 

Halloween is coming up, the one day when the line gets blurred. This is my first Halloween since I left, so I’m looking forward to it. For one single day, I can feel like I’m a part of it all. Halloween is the day of ghosts and spirits, so maybe someone will be looking for me. Maybe someone will see me. I’ll be in the thick of it, permitted to exist just a little more. I don’t know what it will be like, but maybe it will feel like I never left.

I was wrong. Today is the day, and it’s very clear to me that I am no longer the same as them, that I’ll never be alive again. I’m solid, more so than usual at least, but it’s not quite the same as before. My skin seems to melt into things, as though I’m no different from the dirt on the ground or the can of Coke in my hand. I can’t taste anymore either. It seems that taste is a sensation reserved for those who are alive. People’s eyes linger a few seconds longer on me, but they never acknowledge me, it’s as though they can tell that I’m not supposed to be here, I’m simply a tourist that they don’t care for.

I’m as alone as I was yesterday. I want to go to all of the people I didn’t say a proper goodbye to, I want to give them everything that’s been sitting in my chest these past five years. I can’t though, as much as I want closure, they seem to have found it already. To show up out of nowhere, to demand they open up that sealed wound in their hearts where I once resided, it would be cruel. My emotions, heavy and sharp, one of the only things I could hold onto in those years, are not to be their burden. 

I’ve followed my family around as they go trick or treating with Eva, that’s my sister’s name. This is their first year taking her, I guess they were worried she would get taken too, but she won’t, I know it. Dad is pushing a stroller, the same stroller they used for me when I was little, but Mom is holding Eva’s hand while she walks, which she’s gotten quite good at. She doesn’t walk for too long before they put her back in the stroller, but she does get out plenty of times. After too long of being in the stroller, she gets antsy and starts trying to release herself from her confines. It’s really adorable. I feel a light smile stretch across my face, as well as a trail of warmth running down my cheek, I’m glad they’re happy. The tears make me feel alive too, if only for a moment. I hadn’t enjoyed a single shed tear in years; it’s a sensation you don’t expect to miss, but you do.

They get to the house of Mrs. Naber, a close family friend, and take a moment to talk. Eva sits in her stroller, certainly not forgotten but definitely unattended. I’m surprised that they’re willing to take their eyes off of her for a second, but that just means they’re healing, no longer paranoid, which is a relief. As she’d done many a time tonight, Eva struggled with the clasps and snaps that held her in place, absolutely determined to go anywhere at all. Completely unnoticed by Mom and Dad, she actually managed to slip out under the tray in front of her seat. She started to walk towards the light of a neighbors house and found herself in the middle of the street, where she proceeded to fall down and remain. Mrs. Naber let out a sharp yell and pointed straight ahead, behind my parents. It was then that I noticed the oncoming car. Mom and Dad made to get her but weren’t going to make it in time. With inhuman speed, I suppose I’m really no longer human, I sprinted over and scooped her up.

“Bong!” She looked tickled pink that I’d grabbed her and kept repeating the word over and over. “Bong bong bong bong!” Thank goodness for gym class. Grabbing, pulling, and rattling all of the jewelry on me, I can’t help but be overcome with an odd feeling. This is how it could be, how it should be. I could be big, strong, and tall, her protector. We could all be a big happy family. Hearing the yelling of my parents as they cross the street snaps me back into reality. No matter how it should be, that isn’t how it is. Quickly, I plant a kiss on Eva’s forehead and set her down, running away before they can see my face.

 I wonder what they made of it, a stranger wearing the costume of their dead child saving their living one, or if they even recognized the pirate costume at all. All I can hope is that that simple action said everything I’d been meaning to say. I’m still here, still watching you, still loving you. I’m not upset that you chose to be happy, I love her too. Hopefully, it said anything at all that would bring them the same comfort it brought me.