part of a story

News of my death is accurate, much to my chagrin.

One day I woke up and realized that I had died. It wasn’t a sudden death. Probably the reason why I barely noticed my own passing. I looked around the room and realized that I recognized nothing of myself in it. That the rest of the world had realized I was gone long ago. I had forgotten to disappear with the rest of my things. Crawling from the bed, I neglected to make it up and knew that no one would notice either way, that it would remain unmade until it was used again that night, possibly very late in the night after a long string of carousing. Walking to the bathroom, I noticed that the light bulbs were blown out, that the towels and all the things in the room were black. This gave me some heart; perhaps I had only recently died. But no, the black was from dirt and scum from accumulated years and I knew with a sinking heart that I must have gone on long ago because I would never have allowed such dirt to accumulate had I been alive.

Sadly, I went through the rest of the house touching each foreign object, some things looking familiar but often damaged and neglected with layers of dust and dirt indicating that the owner that had cherished such items had long since left this earth. I sighed and dust motes went dancing around me and made me sneeze so long and hard that I was almost sure that I was still alive. I called for someone but no one was there. I could faintly hear the TV in some room but could not find the room. I could see that the yard was mowed but not trimmed, the newspapers brought in but never taken out and the furniture lived in but never straightened. Nothing was tidy or neat as I had always kept my life, all was in disarray and neglected.

I then passed a mirror and saw for the first time that I was in equally sad shape. I had gone gray in the hair as well as my skin. I looked as though I had been buried for quite sometime, but could not understand why I was still walking around. I looked at the shape of my body and found it lacked the suppleness of my lifetime athletic pursuits and was bulgy in places I had never bulged and saggy where past muscles with taut power had resided. I tried to cry but the tears would not come, as though I had long ago grieved for this event and was dry.

Despite this death, I appeared to still have a sense of smell and could smell body odor, urine, dirty hair, old skin, dust, cat feces, dog food, rotting food in the sink and myriad other smells that would never have assailed me during my life. I

I picked up the phone to see if I had a dial tone and sure enough I could still hear. What I heard instead of a dial tone was the screeching and scratching tones of the computer connection and thought that perhaps I had left the computer on when I died. I might even have died while at the computer since I had spent so much of my later life sitting in front of the computer screen.

Remembering my life was rather difficult. It swam in front of me with its sameness. Perhaps this is how I had died so undetectably. Perhaps I has simply crossed over and the act was so close to the way I had been living that I did not even notice. I wondered if anyone else had noticed. I saw no wreaths or indications of grief.

I finally located my family, or the shells of them sitting in front of a computer screen, typing senseless things like “lol” repeatedly, but not laughing out loud at all. It was completely silent except for the tapping. I wondered how alive they were. The other members of the family were in front of the TV watching comedy that did not seem to make them laugh and despite the TV sound tracks telling them when to laugh, they simply breathed, in and out, as the laughter died down and the next joke was delivered. I tried to invoke some response in turn from each person, but they simply waved, side to side, and continued what they were doing.

I sought out my husband but could not find him anywhere. I looked under the car, in the refrigerator, in the garage and behind the lawn mower, his favorite hiding spot. My hatred of the mower vaguely recalled...some days I had tried to get him to go on picnics and family outings but mowing was usually the reason he used to beg off. He seemed to love mowing as much as, no much more than, making love. Making love? Who called it that? I did recall a certain emptiness of the heart while I had been alive in that region. Fatigue from mowing was a wonderful reason to just forego the lovemaking at night. Even with the kids gone, we could find reasons to avoid each other. Not that I tried, but you know, keeping the house clean took a lot of time when children and husbands alike helped to make it dirty. That endless dance, no contest, where I was to pretend to love the cleaning and to be proud when I got the house that way while they pretended to appreciate my work but worked hard to undo it had fatigued me each day. Not to say that’s all I did. I had a full time job. I cannot remember what it was now. I know it was important to me and that I handled important issues and decisions and made good money. Whatever that is. No, the job was just beginning when I arrived home at 6 pm. The second shift where I was to chase after children to force them to do their homework, get their baths, pick up after themselves and generally learn how to live like human beings was a thankless and endless job. At least I can’t remember anyone ever thanking me. I think I must have died a little each day.

After looking for the man who had promised to love honor and cherish me, I gave up and turned my attention to my hobbies. I sought out the knitting I had done and the sewing; all the kids clothes and their stuffed toys I had made over the years. These things were stuffed into corners, on the floor, under beds and in the backs of closets. I was sad but beyond tears or surprise. I felt nothing much really. One last effort to find names of friends in my phone book revealed that many of the names were scratched out. No one to call apparently. Realizing that I was truly dead, I stopped looking for evidence that I had lived or might still be living.

After a day of seeking to prove my aliveness and failing, I turned and left, walking straight out the door, not looking back, and into the night. I had spent the whole day wandering the house seeking solace, consolation and comfort that my life had not been without value. When I found none, I walked from the house and into the streets. Aimlessly, not knowing what one does on the street I found myself thinking that if I was really dead that I did not need anything at all for comfort. That cold or hot, it did not matter one whit. I was dead. I suddenly felt very free. Disencumbered. Liberated. I could go and do whatever, without thought as to who it might discomfort or inconvenience. I recalled that inconvenience had been the biggest issue my beloved husband had complained about. I was constantly inconveniencing him with my desires and wishes. Even keeping the house clean bothered him because it required me to remove his detritus from the dressers, tables, chairs, countertops and nightstands ad naseum and he constantly complained that he couldn’t find his stuff. When told where it had been put it was always in disarray and not to his liking even if it had simply been transferred in exactly the same situation as found to another location, more out of the way and less visible. This was exactly his beef apparently. When it was not visible, to everyone I suppose, it was impossible for him remember about these things and it made his life very difficult and sometimes caused him great problems at work. All this because I moved a pile of receipts from the center of the couch to his nightstand drawer. I had always tried to reason with him, but it never worked. Reason had nothing to do with it. I was supposed to just understand that he could not do any different and discompose myself around it. That was the end of it. No compromises could ever be struck, no changes in behavior on my part would assuage his insult.

Nevermind I told myself. It’s all over now. Now that I’m dead, I can never be inconvenienced again and since I am not there to make problems for him, neither could he. What a wonderful solution death has turned out to be!

I wondered about my children and their reaction. I wondered how long it had taken them to notice I had gone. I realized that while there I had simply accepted the role of backstage manager and never really asserted my presence. It had been difficult, as difficult as changing my skin color to purple in fact. Not that I never wanted to be in charge. I had done this quite well at work, but at home I was criticized and told I was too exacting, too clean, obsessive and difficult to live with. When had I become these things? Had I been that way from the beginning and he had simply tolerated me because he loved me? Or was I this way from the time with him? Could he have had anything to do with such a transformation from happy, carefree and adventurous 30 year old to old, tired, dead 48 year old? What does blame matter when one is dead? I care not today. I wander, float, stumble and drag myself around the town watching other dead people on the street and live people who appear to me to be dying at quite a pace. Do they realize how they are dying? I know I never knew. It still surprises me every morning to awaken and realize that I am still dead. Still empty. Still nothing to anyone.

Dead on the streets for many days, I walk all day each day watching the living. I wonder if I will go to heaven or if this is it. Seems a disappointment to die and end up like this. I always expected heaven to be something wondrous and beautiful. I have considered that perhaps I was sent to hell, but decided over the days that instead I must be in a holding pattern. Somewhere between heaven and hell. I am not miserable, but neither am I happy. Some things I must do to keep going, like eating occasionally, but others I am released from. I have no desire to go anywhere, make love or even wake up most days. Eating I only do when there is an ache, but there is no pleasure in it. I have decided I must be in purgatory. I’m waiting to know what I should do to escape this, but I’m in no hurry. This is the most at peace I have ever been. Without a promise or even a hint of better things, and the vague possibility that I deserve hell, I’m in no hurry to change my circumstance at all. I’m satisfied to simply be a ghost on earth.

I found a dime in my pocket one day and tried to use it for something, but was unable to buy anything. I guess money has died as well. I don’t see people using money anymore. I see those silly dead people sitting on the street begging as if they need food and they get nothing from the live ones.... They all use cards. Cards that allow them to pretend they have money. Cards that take the joy of seeing what you earn away and make it seem all too easy to just spend and spend.

This is how my children lived when I was alive. They seemed to believe the money was not anything real. Like the cartoon characters that die and pop back alive, they believe the money simply regenerates itself each day and there is always more than enough for all their wants. My husband too seemed to believe all this. He would spend every cent in the checking account and could never understand why this upset me. He never paid any bills, that was always my job. I can’t help wondering how in the world he is paying his bills today. What exactly is the condition of his finances? How does he pay for food? Does he even remember to feed the children? I doubt it. They probably live on cheetos and coke these days. I have momentary pangs of regret when I think things like this. This warns me that perhaps I could begin to care again and that death might not be permanent. When I realize that, I undo my guilt and go back to aimless wandering. It is so much better to be dead. I don’t have to worry any longer.

I do sleep. I suppose even ghosts need rest occasionally. I have found that there are some grates behind the Seelbach hotel that allow one to sleep quite comfortably...not that I seek comfort. These provide a measure of privacy and a warm spot for an evening. The hotel staff look the other way during the late night, but very early, at 5AM they arrive and that is when we all must depart for the day. This is such a good spot that it is important to arrive exactly on time. That is why my watch, which I must’ve died wearing, is so important to me. If one arrives later than 9 PM, there are no spots left. Then one must either wander the streets all night or find an empty stoop to crouch in for the night. These are treacherous since residents don’t like ghosts in their stoops and will call the police who are rather cruel to ghosts. I find it difficult to understand why I am still experiencing pain when I am hit if I am dead. Perhaps I am in a halfway point where the senses still sense, or perhaps I am imagining my own pains.

At any rate, the nights are quiet for now. The day is the problem. I try to tell people that they are dying too and to stop the process. I talk to everyone on the street, but they turn away. Being dead I think I must be invisible. I think I am talking but no one is listening. Still I keep trying, it just seems too important to stop. But then I realize that I am caring again and stop talking.

I talked to a lady one day. She seemed very kind and listened to my advice very carefully and handed me a card with an address. I think she must be a ghost too and not realize it. She’s pretending to be alive because that’s easier for her to deal with than to see that she is dead. She encouraged me to stop by and talk to her some more, but I never went. After I had talked to her, told her she must be dead so that she was sufficiently warned, it would be a waste to spend more time talking to her with so many others still needing a warning.

I tell them that they are not really living. They don’t like to hear that. I tell them that living is experiencing the air as it is inhaled, not simply inhaling unconsciously. I tell that I no longer can feel the air, hear my breath, that I am dead and no air is required. I try to show them how I no longer breathe but they keep walking by, keep walking by. Sometimes they hand me money, as if this a palliative for all the issues I am dealing with. I holler at those people and they walk faster. They think I am like the crazy homeless people. I try to tell them all that I am not homeless. I have a home and can go back there whenever I want to, I just don’t choose to. I choose to inform, to deliver my message of deliverance from materiality. No one hears.

One day I wonder if I should go home and warn my family. I’m pretty sure they are already dead. They just don’t realize it like I didn’t. They will figure it out. I don’t know what they will do about it. I no longer know my children. I don’t think I ever knew my husband. I give this up as a bad idea, but it does start me thinking about life...or what I refer to now as my dying days.

Living with my husband was like living in a jail cell. Isolated from friends and family, never spoken to unless it was necessary for some essential act and prevented from living any joy. How can a person have so much influence you ask? I ask myself this. I realize now I never really saw what was happening. It was like living with a heavy bag tied around your neck. At first you fight it, but once you realize this bag cannot be removed you try to work around it. This is hard at the beginning but you adapt and find methods to cope with the weight and the inconvenience of its placement. You begin to move it to one hip unconsciously when you want to carry another load, or you push it behind you when you’re pregnant and new weight appears in the front. Relentlessly the bag is there, but you become accustomed to its presence and make allowances for its weight. Without realizing it you begin to sag or bend. This also becomes normal and you don’t even see it when you look in the mirror. You notice it occasionally when it becomes really problematic. For instance when you have to buy two airline tickets because one seat is too small for you now. Or when you have to buy a larger car than you want because that weight would damage a small one. This added expense is simply a fact of your life. You adapt to that too and deny yourself small pleasures for the necessity of this weight. Until one day, you don’t even notice it anymore. Your friends, if you have them, notice it but accept it as a characteristic of you and react to you in light of the heavy bag on your neck. They don’t invite you to certain events because the unsightly bag is not okay in polite company. Especially since it is covered in statements about you that are abhorrent and lead others to believe that you are difficult to be around and very cranky by nature. You begin to believe what the bag says about you and this creates a new reality. You don’t sleep well because the bag is there. You don’t feel pretty because of this bag. You don’t like others to see it so you are less friendly and stay isolated on your own. You tire easily because the bag is there, you stop working out because the joy of exercise is gone. You become reclusive and sad. This makes the bag happy. You are now the possession of the bag alone. You live to support this bag, this weight and nothing that happens, happens unless the bag accepts it. You accept this over time and suddenly you have become the pillar of support and there is no purpose left to your life.

I got to the end of those thoughts and frightened myself. I knew how I had died so slowly. I was simply crushed to death by this weight. It happened too slowly for me to realize. It was too sad. I cried all day that day. People could see me that day. I was inconsolable. This caused me a great deal of concern. I never knew that dead people could cry or be so sad. In death I had escaped my “bag” but I had also lost a chance to live. That day, that same lady with the card came by. She told me that people had told her about me and asked her to help me. I told her I could not be helped and that she should just go away. She asked me to come to her shelter for ghosts. This encouraged me to believe that she might see me as the ghost I was and perhaps I could find my next place. I stayed overnight but she didn’t have any other ghosts there. She had lied. They were all homeless people that were lost and crazy. I am not crazy and I don’t want to be with people who are. I walked out the next morning and began to help others again.

I forgot about it, but that lady (She said her name was Sarah) took my picture that day. I told her she was wasting her time but she did it anyway. Ghosts don’t show up on film. I got angry with her but remembered that she can’t understand me so I gave up and just disappeared. Being on the street is not like being alive. Nope, people really don’t see anything, not even the homeless ones. I feel sorry for them. The homeless ones still feel something. They feel the cold and the shunning, they feel the heat and the anger. They feel. I don’t feel anything. I’m numb all the way through. Numbness keeps me from feeling the cold. That stupid lady, Sarah (she says) comes by to try to find me a lot. If I see her coming I just disappear. When I don’t see her coming she tries to give me coats or food. I won’t take it, it would fall through my hands. It doesn’t stay with me. I give stuff to the homeless people. I just leave it next to them when they aren’t looking. They don’t say thank you because they can’t see me. The ones that think they see me, I tell them I’m invisible. They don’t bother me after that.

Lately I’m having trouble because I keep remembering my past life. I mean, I remember when I was alive. Sometimes this troubles me a lot. I worry about my children until I recall that they didn’t even notice when I died. That makes me sad. Do ghosts feel? I don’t know any other ghosts to ask so I’m not sure. Maybe that’s why I’m still here, I can’t stop feeling that sadness. It makes me tired too. I sleep. Do ghosts sleep? I should stop asking these questions. I’m a ghost. I sleep. Therefore ghosts sleep. So I’m okay. Or I’m doing dead fine. That makes me laugh. I wonder about that. Last week I didn’t think anything was funny. Now suddenly I laugh at my thoughts.

I’m still trying to tell people that they are dead, walking dead. They brush by me or try to give me a coin. I yell at them to save themselves! Hurry! Before it’s too late. It’s too late. It was too late a long time ago for me. I just didn’t know. Why didn’t a ghost tell me to wake up? Or maybe a ghost did and I just didn’t hear like all these poor people. They rush, rush, rush to where ever it is they are going and don’t even realize that there are birds singing and air blowing around. Time is ticking away and they are wasting it all on rushing around. I heard the birds today myself. I saw a robin and realized that spring must be coming. That’s good. The homeless ones will be able to sleep more warmly now. It won’t be quite so cold at night. I still sleep on my grate each night. No one has tried to take it away. I keep it comfortable now because I stole a blanket from a dumpster and use it to sort of soften the rails. I don’t have marks on my sides anymore during the day from sleeping on the grate. I guess I keep it because I’m haunting it. The homeless people seem to see me but they pretend not to. They are afraid of me. I hit a man one night. When I was alive I practiced Tae Kwon Do and I know how to hit and make it count. I hit that guy right in the throat. He choked and gagged all the way down the street. No one ever bothers me. Except that stupid woman...here she comes again.

I got rid of her. I told her to go away or I’d hit her just like the man I killed. She was scared. I didn’t kill anyone but it helps to make them think you’re dangerous. She came back with the police but I was invisible then. The policeman said he’d keep an eye out for me. I memorized his face so I could avoid him. She showed him my picture and he kept asking, “Are you sure this is her?” As if he knew me. I never saw him before. He’s ugly anyway, who’d want to know him?

When I was alive. I keep dreaming about being alive. I was dying every day after I got married and I just didn’t see it. Some important days, like when I gave birth to my daughter or my son, I felt alive, but afterwards, the numbness was all I could feel. I recall being frightened by the absence of emotion. I tried to make myself feel things that would not come. I spent my days working at a job I hated, just to earn money. Where does money go? I would earn extra money some days and it would just disappear out of the accounts. I kept asking, “where is all that money I deposited?” and my husband would say, “you just forgot about some bills, isn’t mommy silly?” I was silly. I kept losing my things. Important things like the check book. I would put it in my purse and the next time I went looking for it, it would not be there. This would frighten me, I would worry about a thief taking all our money. I would worry and worry until my husband would bring it to me and say “silly, I found it right in your purse where it always is.” This also frightened me. How could it be there? I would have cleaned the whole thing out and looked at everything over and over. At least three times thinking I certainly had missed it. I would cry and worry and then he would go straight to it? I would ask myself how this was possible. How had I missed it? In my OWN purse? I was not thinking clearly obviously. I was senile and already dying, almost dead in fact and didn’t even realize it. How frightened I was.

Now that I am dead, I no longer lose things. I don’t have much but what I do carry, seems to stay where I put it AND I can recall where I put it. I am happy to be dead and not crazy.

I tried to discuss this with my husband but he would shussh me and say that I was silly. “Of course I wasn’t crazy or senile, I had just lost the check book, stop fretting.” He comforted me this way. He would tell me not to be silly or that I was overworking myself. I should just rest a bit. Go lie down.

As wonderful as he was, I came to resent him. I hated his attitudes; that I was silly or just tired. This made me feel so small and insignificant. But he was a wonderful man. How I mistreated him. All my friends would compliment me on what a thoughtful gentle soul he was. How lucky I was to have a man so gentle and kind. I would again wonder what was wrong with me? Why am I so ungrateful, when I have a man so good? We would spend a weekend with my parents leaving him behind and upon return I would find that he had repainted the living room so it was neater. The room would be neater on the walls, but the furniture would stay in disarray for weeks, the painting supplies would stay in the utility sink and there would be spots of paint on my furniture, the sink and the carpet. None of this mattered to him. He would expect to be loved and told how good he was for having gone to so much trouble just for me. Any other reaction and I would be an ingrate. And I agreed with him. After all, why am I so obsessive about a clean, neat house? Didn’t he go to a lot of trouble for me? How could I be so picky? My friends, such as they were...they disappeared over the years...would insist that he was a kind man and that I was so lucky to have such a loving father for my children.

I wondered why my friends just stopped calling me. Over time they just had no time left for me. I discussed this with my husband and he would tell me that they were all jealous of me and couldn’t handle a woman of my abilities. I should just forget about them. If that’s the way they were, I decided, I would forget about them. Who needs friends that aren’t really? My life became very solitary, with the exception of one friend that I had known all through college. She and I would get together about once per month or every other month, depending upon our other life plans. My husband hated her. He made this known. Although we tried to include him in our get-togethers and she would give him gifts, he never warmed to her. He told me she made him uncomfortable. He said she wasn’t really my friend. He told me that she was odd and that I should try not to spend too much time with her. He said she was a bad influence on our daughter. Despite all that, she remained my friend.

I wonder if she knows I’ve died? Did he call her and tell her? Or does she just think I have stopped calling her? This makes me sad.

I struggled to be happy during my life. I tried to make myself love my good husband. But it would not come. I felt guilty and desperate to be a good person. I knew I wasn’t a good person because he would tell me that I was too difficult to satisfy and too demanding of friends, him and our children. I expected too much. I tried to control everything so that everything would be perfect. I was a perfectionist and so were our children because of me. This made me sad.


Now that I am dead, I no longer have to be perfect. I have no plans and no organization, no worries about clutter or money. I just exist in the streets and my purpose is to help others. Does this mean that I am atoning for all my lack of love in my life? Perhaps this purgatory I am in, is the necessary price for entry to heaven. I am making up for all my stinginess when I worried about money and where it disappeared to. Maybe if I had given more away to charity I would have had more somehow. This makes no sense to me, but he always insisted that I give to charity and give large amounts so that others would be impressed with our beneficence. I knew we couldn’t afford it. We usually ended up using credit to cover the missing amount for groceries or other requirements. When I tried to talk to him about this it was the same old, “you worry too much. Calm down. Here let me give you a back rub.”

Oh how I hated his back rubs. I’m sure that other wives would welcome such a pleasure, but it gave me none at all. I would allow him to do this but it would become a wooden mechanical thing where he did not rub my back but simply rub his hand repeatedly in one area until it became sore. Usually he would be watching TV while he did this so it was without a lot of attention. Try to tell your friends that you get annoyed when your husband gives you a back rub. They insist that they would LOVE it if their husband even offered. His sisters were the worst. They would tell me how much he loved me. How he would cry to them and say that he tried his best but that I could never be satisfied...how he loved me deeply.

Words. Words. Words. So many words and so little real love. Where was the love when I needed comfort? I ask myself where he was when the children were first born? Running around, never home, out until 2 or 3 in the morning. I never saw him then. But he would tell me that he loved me and take our children to his soccer games to show them off to his friends. I would end up sitting for hours in the hot sun with a fussy child while he ran around. With only one car I couldn’t leave because the soccer games were over a 45 minute drive away. By the time I would get home, I would have to return. Besides he wanted me there when they won so he could hug me when he was all sweaty and make everyone laugh. I hated those sweaty hugs. It was disgusting.

To admit that I hated him was a long time coming. Finally I admitted I did. This I believe was when I finally admitted to myself that I was a horrible human being, devoid of all love and that I deserved whatever I got. I simply decided that it was my job to endure whatever pain there was because I had to stay with my children and my husband. But now I see that when I realized my hate was when I died almost completely. The numbness became a fact of life.

Neither my children nor my husband noticed. Of course I can forgive the children. They don’t know what I was alike alive. They never knew me when I had lots of friends, when I would give parties and dozens of people would come and have a good time. They never realized that their mother was just going through the motions and that she really had no friends at all.

But him. He met me when I was vibrant and alive. He knew how much I had changed. He never expressed concern or regret. He never even was around.

My life was lived in two parts as I see it now. The first part where I was happy and hopeful about the future. I lived for change, excitement and the next new thing. I traveled and made friends around the world. Men chased after me. I had dozens of offers of marriage but in my 20's I could not be pinned down. My life was a wonderful. I earned lots of money because I was smart and educated doing a man’s job. Architects make lots of money if they are good at what they do and everyone admired my work then. They thought I was on my way up, destined to be the next Pia; the first truly internationally known female architect. I was exciting, my life was exciting and I was happy on the outside. Inside I was lonely and sad. I wanted a man in my life, but often the men that wanted me mistreated me somehow. One man took money from me and used it to date and impregnate another woman whom he later married, never repaying his debt. One man, my boss, pressured me into an affair and then left me when it became known to deny all knowledge of me. One man accidentally burned my leg with hot tea on an airplane. Afterwards during our vacation, he could not understand why we could not make love.
Still other men were nice to me, but often very dependent and weak man. Men who would rather not make their own decisions and who would be very passive.
I dated an ex-pro football player once, but he had some serious problems with the loss of his career and odd sexual proclivities.

All these men represented my sample of the male human race. Not a particularly appetizing sample of men from which to draw a life partner. Realizing this I was pretty sure I would never get married until began dating my husband. To be fair I had endured a very hard year that year. I was very ill from overwork and chronic disease, had lost my youngest sibling to AIDS and my parents were completely unavailable for any other problems with their children. I was very alone, very sad and very ill. This unfortunately is when I met Albert. Albert was, to me at that time, the nicest man I had met. He appeared to be someone who had had many bad breaks and who, like me, could use some support. I imagined that we mutually complemented each other. He was rather staid, but could seemingly have fun. I was more impulsive but understood introverts. We appeared to me to be in love. What does love feel like? Mutual interests? Or is there really something more to it than that? Today I know that what we had was not love. I still don’t know what love is, but I’m sure that my marriage did not embody it.

It’s funny, in being dead, I was sure that I would know real love. You know how everyone always says that you will know God when you die? It just feels like this limbo for me right now. I am trying to earn my way into heaven so I can finally lay down and wake up again in heaven, but every new day I am still a ghost here on earth.

Today it was raining as I walked to the shelter for a cup of coffee. That annoying woman is always there but I try to avoid her. She will often stop me as I walk out the door and insist on giving me bread or some change. I ignore her. I tried to tell her how dead she was, but the words simply did not come out of my mouth. I figured for a woman to be perceptive enough to see me, a ghost, and to care about my well-being, perhaps she is not as dead as the others. She’s still annoying however, and that alone is enough for me to pronounce her as good as dead. Anyone that annoying will just not have many friends.

The streets are familiar to me now. The holes in the sidewalks at 5th and Main, the construction block at 6th and Main. At Broadway, the lights always make the motorists mad because they delay on all directions for walkers, due to the large office building at the corner. They all honk and yell. Imagine beginning your morning that irritable. I was irritable myself as I walked the 15 blocks up Main to the shelter. I was very wet and my shoes were soggy. I realized that my feet were cold. Really cold! What a surprise to feel the wetness around my toes. Can a person come back to life or are cold toes just part of the penance I wondered? As I mused about my toes, walking along looking at my silly feet, a man bumped into me and knocked me down, hard. I hit my head on the side of the building and then the street as well. I did not get back up.

Later I found myself in some sort of smelly building, all white with people bustling about in the hallway where I lay. I tried to get up but found I was strapped to the table. When I yelled, not one person came to me. I realized that even if someone could see me to strap me down, no doubt these dying individuals would never see me. They are too fast to see ghosts. Speeding by the such important and unctuous footsteps. Where can they be going that is so much more important than here? I watched them for several hours. After a long period, someone did come by and ask me my name. I had a lot of trouble recalling that. I finally told them Nancy because it was the first name that came to me. I can’t figure out now if that’s right or not. Later a policeman came by and said he needed to make a report. I asked him what for and he said for the assault.

I got upset and said I never assaulted anyone and how could he say that when I was strapped to a table? He told me that I had been assaulted. I asked him who would do that to a ghost? He looked at me funny and said he’d be back.

Now I’m in a room still strapped to the table and some people are peering into my eyes with very bright lights. I think maybe I’m getting ready to enter heaven. Perhaps I will finally be done with this earthly purgatory business and they will let me follow the light to heaven. But no, hours later they come in and carefully take the straps off of me. Someone says something in a soothing voice and I don’t respond. Last time I said something everyone went away and I woke up here. It’s unclear to me why I am here.

They made me take a shower today. I have not bathed in a long time. I wasn’t aware that ghosts had to bathe. If anyone had told me that when I was alive I would have just laughed. I will tell you now though, ghosts can get whiter! I laughed out loud when I saw the black water pouring into the drain. No wonder people began to see me, I was a walking dirt ball! I guess it works sort of like the invisible man...if you are unclothed, no one can see you, but as soon as you get something on you, people can see that coated part.

This made me happy. The first time in a long time I felt true happiness. I knew I was ready now to enter heaven, I had figured out the secret. I knew that we were all invisible, but because we wear clothes, we can be seen and therefore we are seduced into believing that we are mortal and alive, when in fact, if we were all completely clean and naked we would be spirits. It was so clear. I tried to tell the man that came back for me why I preferred not to put my clothes back on, but he got angry and shouted at me. I shrugged and realized that even with clothes on, I did not have to become seduced by the fact that I was wearing material. I was still a spirit.

He pushed me into a room with a man sitting at a desk. This man asked me to sit down. Looking at him I thought he must be St. Peter. Why are all the important figures in religion men? I laughed out loud again thinking that perhaps I could be promoted to the position of St. Peter, but without a peter, perhaps the position is just unfillable by a woman? This made me laugh so much I cried. The man asked me very seriously why I was laughing and crying. I told him because he was St. Peter with a peter.

He frowned at me and told me that such jokes were inappropriate. I laughed again because I realized that I was still dead and that this was not St. Peter...wondering if perhaps he had no peter in consequence. It was silly I know, but I was doubled over in laughter at my own humor and the idiocy of the situation. This man, thinking to be so serious when I am already dead and nothing matters at all.

He said “now let’s begin again.” I could see he was trying to control me so that I would behave as an alive person. This was ridiculous as well. I floated up to the ceiling and stayed there for awhile looking down at him. I waved down to him but he frowned and wrote “unresponsive” in his notes. He kept looking at the chair where I wasn’t asking the chair questions, while I was on the ceiling. Of course I’m unresponsive, chairs don’t speak. I giggled so hard I got the hiccups. Do ghosts get hiccups too?

I was taken back to a room and pushed onto a bed. They tied me to it again. I woke up later to see my family bending over me. Albert jumped back when I opened my eyes. The children stared at me. They all tried to talk to me, but I knew they couldn’t hear me so I didn’t respond. I fell back asleep and they were not there when I awoke. It must have been a dream of my funeral.

I have been in this room for days with no release. They come and feed me with a tube that someone stuck down my throat. I keep saying that dead people don’t need food, give it to a dying child, but no one listens. Why can’t they hear me?

That annoying woman came by today. Funny, I was glad to see someone who could really hear me. She looked at me sadly and shook her head. I tried to tell her I was okay, but she kept crying for me.


Unsympathetic.


I dreamt today that I was back at home. It frightened me so much that I cried and cried. I do not wish to be back alive again. To live in that prison he called home, I would know I had been sentenced to Hell. Perhaps that is where I will go after all. Did I really live in Hell for 16 years? Live with a man who loved me so much he felt it necessary to keep me all to himself? This came to me unbidden. I never saw it that way before. I was isolated by his actions. He told me no one liked me and I wonder what he said to others about me. I overheard him one day. He told a woman I had just made friends with in the neighborhood that I had beaten the dog for vomiting on the carpet. He said he was worried about the dog and asked her to let him know if the dog ever appeared to be injured. I asked him why he had said that later and he laughed and told me not to worry, that he was just talking about his sister who sits for our dog. I told him I clearly heard him say my name, but he said I was wrong and why would I accuse him of such a terrible thing? He got insulted and told me that I was full of awful thoughts about him. Why couldn’t I ever trust him? What had he ever done to make me think he would say such a horrible thing about me? I asked him why he said it about his sister because I had never seen her do anything like that. He said he had seen her be cruel to animals when she was young. I asked him why we would use her to take care of the dog then and he told me that family was important, but that was something I never understood. He told me that I should let him take care of this situation.
He accused me of being difficult. Wanted to know who else we would get? How could we pay for a kennel....wasn’t I always complaining about money? I was very upset by now. I told him that we would have to pay for a kennel next time if he really thought his sister was cruel to animals. He said he thought she had grown out of it but that he wanted someone to watch.

Later, the dog was injured. His sister had been there that day he said. He told me that she had run right into the wall and injured her shoulder. He took her to the vet but she limped for a week. I felt bad for her. She is really a good dog, but often very hyper and at times difficult to control. Whenever Albert mows the lawn, if he gets close to the fence she yipes like she is injured.

I did notice that the neighbor never spoke to me again.

I don’t like to think about my life. It wasn’t good and remembering things like that make me frightened. I wonder if I should have done something different. I cried today about the dog.

I saw St. Peter again today. Not the real one, that guy that got irritated with me. I didn’t laugh at all, he has no sense of humor. I did try to tell him a joke I recalled. “Bubba and Earl go to the football game and during intermission the band and the mascot, a big ole dog come onto the field. The dog, sits down in the middle of the field and commences to lickin hisself. Earl says “I wish I could do dat.’ Bubba says ‘ That dog’d bite you!!’”

St. Peter is not amused with this joke. His reply was something like, “I’m surprised that a woman in your situation would be making jokes.”

I tried to tell him that a woman in my situation would be the most likely to tell jokes, but he just shook his head. The dizzy spells I had been having when I lived with my family have come back. They are like little spirals in my brain. I can’t remember things when those spells occur. I just sit and experience the spirals. I had one with St. Peter. He asked me what I was feeling. I told him I was spiraling into the gates of hell. His face was expressive. I could see his disgust. I wondered why he hated me. I wondered if he was dead too and if I was doing it all wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised. I did life all wrong, why would dying change anything?

I asked him if it mattered. St. Peter just looked confused and didn’t answer. He asked me to think about my family. I said I have and that’s enough. He clenched his jaw. He asked me if I knew where they were or how they were doing. I told him they were all dead. He seemed surprised to hear this. I told him that I was dead and that he was dead too. I called him St. Peter again but he said his name was George. I figured him for some minor archangel. I told him he didn’t act like the angels were supposed to act. He clicked his pen on and off about sixty times, looking at his papers. I sat and waited. I wanted to float to the ceiling again but I couldn’t seem to do it. I just spun in my chair, spiral after spiral. It’s sort of fun if you’re not frightened by it. When I was alive those spirals scared me a lot. I had forgotten about them, since I died I have not had the spirals at all. Now I have them again. Interesting.

St. Peter cleared his throat. He asked me for my name. I said Nancy and he just wrote it down.
He said that was all for today. When I didn’t leave he called for someone to come take me away. Wow, that would be cool if you could just call someone to take a person who irritated you away. I could have used that power when I was alive.

Spiraling Down to Hell

My mission is aborted. I see no one for long periods of time. I cannot redeem myself with God and get into heaven by saving those living dead people on the streets. I wonder what will happen to me now? Will I simply become a spirit in this place? Sometimes they let me wander the halls, but I don’t see anyone. People are kept in little cages here. Maybe this is heaven’s holding cell. All people pass through here for evaluation before going up. It saddens me that such a human plan is used for entry to heaven. All those years spent waiting in line for stuff. Waiting in line and meeting strangers. Meeting strangers that my husband would engage in conversation. I cringed when he would do this. He would manage to bring the conversation to some battle we had had, and make sure that my part would appear ridiculous. The strangers would just laugh. I would ask him later, “why would you bring them into our fight?” He would point out how sensitive I am and say that it was just amusing, nothing serious. I was too private, that sharing was important. Didn’t I always say I wanted him to share his feelings more? “Yes but not with the whole world!” He would laugh and say that he wasn’t sure it was the whole world. I was being hysterical and exaggerating. He wouldn’t listen. He would tell me how petty I was and say that I was teaching our children to be just like me. I would say it was a good thing that he could comfort them when I would upset them like this with my yelling.

I did yell then too. I would be upset and cry and beg him to hear me. I would tell him I hated him and try to get him to see me. He would tell me to be quiet because I was upsetting the children. We would talk about it later.

Later he would say “I want to speak to you about your temper.” This is how it would begin. Formally as if I was a patient and he a doctor. He would dissect my attitudes and remind me that he was the social worker and the person who could handle people better than me, a mere architect and introvert. He would remind me that I had no friends. That I was the person who didn’t seem able to accept love. His love for me was enormous, and why couldn’t I ever see that? I would get angry, defend myself, try to use logic, but it all failed. In the end I would be forced to simply accept the way he was and try to go on.

Later in bed he would kiss me as if nothing had happened. If I tried to talk more, he was always much too tired to continue it. We could talk again another day. We would resolve it later. Later never came. I spent much of my married life frustrated over such things. Worrying about money, about my career and about me. Something must have been terribly wrong with me to be so incapable of seeing how much he loved me. How much he cared for all of us. Love, underlined twice in every card.

The spirals have stopped. I woke up today and they took me to see St. Peter again. I told him that my spirals have stopped. He looked at me funny.

He asked me to explain what a spiral was. I told him it was a spinning in my brain. That I would see the room going around and around. He wrote this down.

St. Peter was kinder today. I didn’t make him mad or laugh today. I wasn’t in the mood to do much. He asked questions and I answered. He likes me better passive. I don’t like me better, but he does. He asked me about Albert. He said “Tell me about Albert.”

I asked what he wanted to know. “Anything.”

I said there wasn’t much to know and stopped, realizing that this was true.

Albert never did anything but sleep, eat, work and play soccer with his German buddies. I never even met his co-workers. One day I stopped by his office and he got angry because he was “very busy,” and asked me to leave. I left 5 minutes later. Spontaneous, Albert was not.