I watched my grandfather’s soul escape in a quick wisp of movement, like a cloth jerked off a table top but almost too fast for the eye to see. He’d been in a coma, and the family was gathered in the aging east Texas farmhouse where he’d been receiving hospice care. We had emptied his bedroom, trying to give his still body space, and I was leaning against the doorframe. I was the only person that was able to stay for the three days it took for his spirit to shake loose. I had refused to leave. I needed to make sure he moved on.
Death is rarely like the movies. It takes time for people to detach from the body, especially when it’s from cancer. In the back of my head I’d absorbed this knowledge, but I never observed it in person. Little is truly real until you experience it first hand. And once you do, it has a unique way of staying with you.
I’d gotten the call three days earlier from my mother. I’d just purchased strawberries for a brunch and swimming party at an older friend’s house and taken an unintentionally long time to pick them out. Every batch I looked at was bruised and I didn’t want to be embarrassed. I was in my mid twenties and afraid of being judged as the youngster that delivered fruit haphazardly, so I’d shuffled through the produce section frowning in my bathing suit and floor length skirt, hoping for better.
I was between jobs at the time and adrift, unsure of my next step in life. A career in teaching was making its way around my head and, having just broken off an engagement to a man I loved, I ached for more. I did not know what that something was. I’d just climbed out of the Chevy four door my grandfather picked for me a few years earlier, unsatisfactory strawberries in hand, when she called.
“Grampy is dying.” Ever the bull in a china shop, my mother.
“How long until he passes?”
“You better move quick. He will probably be gone by the time you get here.”
I hung up and stood still, unable to process. The morning sun was already hot in the Houston sky, and I felt it begin to burn my exposed skin. There was a slight breeze. I remember thinking the grass looked unnaturally green. One of my friend’s neighbors was weeding his flowerbed and the tug of roots pulling loose echoed in snaps down the empty street. I placed my beach towel and purse back in the car and walked to my friend’s front door. She opened it before I knocked.
“My grandfather is dying, and I have to go.”
We looked at each other for a moment. She was a therapist and knew how to identify shock. She held my gaze as awareness kicked in.
“Go. Run. Godspeed.” I handed off the strawberries and ran.
I drove 90 plus the whole trip out to Batson, Texas. Sometimes, I still feel frozen in traffic in that car, as if time stopped while I screamed at the SUVs in front of me to move. I used my emergency blinkers and decided to leave them on. An officer pulled up alongside me at a light when I exited the tollway and surveyed me through the passenger window. I’m not sure what expression I gave him, but whatever it was, it was enough. He gave a curt nod, flashed his lights, and turned under the overpass. When I reached highway 105, a ribbon of black asphalt cutting through the Big Thicket, old dusty country cars pulled onto the shoulder. I whispered silent thank yous as I tore past.
Ancient water oaks once lined the perimeter of the land around the family property, but hurricane Rita had robbed the area of its grandeur. I parked alongside the faded white house and it felt alien, like it was no longer mine. I balled up my skirt in one fist and rushed the front steps, swinging open the door.
My mother and aunt were inside sitting on the couch. The room was dark as my eyes adjusted to the limited light inside.
“Did I miss it?” I gasped.
“No, hun. This might take a while. He’s in a coma, but you can go talk to him.” My aunt was calm, reasonable. My mother nodded as if she had told me this all along.
So many major life events feel like this. Hurry up and wait. I brushed past them and entered his bedroom.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
My cousin Ben and I used to visit my grandparents for long weekends when they lived in Beaumont. My times with them were filled with fun memories of Little Debbie oatmeal cookies stolen from the kitchen at night, conversations about our futures from opposite ends of imagined ball courts in the afternoons, and slow walks around the neighborhood with my grandparents’ steady presence. They took us to rock shops, Whataburger, parks, and let us watch action movies. We were always sad to leave.
One visit, we watched a documentary my grandfather had ordered on VHS about ghosts. Ben and I stared with rapt attention as we viewed a photograph that captured a blurred figure unscrewing a light bulb.
The woman on TV exclaimed, “I’d been trying to figure out for years how that was happening!”
Other hauntings were documented that my grandfather dismissed with a huff, but on occasion he would softly utter, “Yes. That’s right.”
Ben and I were spooked. We lay awake that night talking about ghosts and wondering if the armchair our aunt died in a few months prior was haunted. Ben wanted to check it out. I was wary.
We snuck downstairs, me to guard Ben’s back and raid the kitchen for snacks, Ben to launch an investigation of the paranormal dedicated to my grandparents’ suburban townhome. Ben’s tousled blonde hair was barely visible as we snuck around corners, seeing nothing, and eventually crept into the living room. We stared at the armchair together. I could just see the whites of Ben’s eyes, round and wide.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s weird down here.” His words were whispered, and his caution was infectious. I too imagined a charge in the room, a feeling akin to when a storm is on the horizon. We were thoroughly rattled.
A pall hung in the air as the two of us retreated to the kitchen, our childhood stomachs winning out over our quest for the unknown. We were still uneasy. Ben broke the mood when he raided the cookie jar. As I took a bite of my first cookie, the upstairs light turned on and my grandfather’s deep voice called down and asked us what we were doing up.
He joined us downstairs and we told him about our hunt. His striped pajamas were wrinkled and his gray hair was messy, but he nodded at the foot of the stairs as we poured out our thoughts. Ben did most of the talking; he was good at leading that way. I quietly listened, my young mind understanding that this was a conversation I needed to remember.
“Well, let me tell you something. You’re going to see things in this life. Things you won’t always understand, but they are not what is important. What is important is right here beside you and what you see in front of you. They are there, but the rest of it is not for us to figure out.”
We never asked him what he saw and how he knew these things. His tone of voice was simple and instructional as if he was explaining how to properly hold a tool or safely cross the street. He had a natural gift for putting people at ease. Our fears dissipated.
When our grandfather finished relaying these words of wisdom, Ben and I followed him back up the stairs and to the bedroom we were sharing. We never talked about what he said after that night, but to us, a great secret had been shared. Our grandfather saw ghosts, and some day, we would too.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
There is a heaviness to sickrooms, a sensation that the air is weighed down by the struggle of the ill person inside. When I walked into the bedroom, it swathed me like a blanket. Some natural light entered through the window in the corner, but mostly the space was sparse and still. My grandfather lay in his bed, neatly covered by blankets up to his chest, with his arms resting atop the comforter at his sides. He looked like he was sleeping.
I circled the bed and perched beside him on the side farthest from the door. “Hi, Grampy. I’m here now.” I watched him closely for a reaction, but there was none, just the dull telling rattle that echoed his breaths. I hadn’t held his hand since I was a child, but I timidly reach out and wrapped his fingers in mine. They were cold and his skin felt too smooth, like silk or wet plastic. I hoped he was comfortable.
A few minutes passed and my mother appeared at the door. “The hospice nurse originally thought he was going faster, but he seems to have rallied some.”
“Is he in any pain?”
“She’s giving him medicine for that, to help ease him. He hasn’t woken up today and his roommate found him like this in the morning. Daddy told us to let him go when it is time, so here we are.”
We both watched his face and jumped when his cheek twitched a little. My mother explained. “That’s normal. His nerves and muscles are letting go and they will fire occasionally.”
I nodded, as if I had known this all along, but the information was unsettling. The nurse had already explained these things to my mother casually, because for her it was an everyday occurance. It struck me as uncomfortable, to walk through life with such a strong knowledge of death.
I watched my grandfather’s face. It was as if he was waiting there just beneath the surface, a small shake away fom waking up.
“Did you bring a change of clothes?”
I laughed, my brightly colored party attire contrasting violently with the somber cloud over us. “Nope. I jumped in the car and came straight here.”
“Well, your aunt and I are going to go home tonight and pack, so you can carpool with me. We’ll come back out in the morning.”
I blinked, shifting my position uncomfortably. “I don’t want to leave him, Mom.”
“I know, dear.”
“I’ll drive to the store in Liberty and pick up a change of clothes. I can’t go with him like this.”
I knew it hurt her to leave him, and I immediately felt guilty for insinuating that she was okay with going. Everyone copes with grief differently. She needed time away to process. I, on the other hand, immersed myself.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
I was twelve when it started to happen. Even in empty rooms, I never felt alone. I saw shadows at the corner of my eyes and once, when lifting my arm to turn on a lightswitch, I was greeted by a grey shaded hand reaching out to touch my own. It terrified me, so I told my mother about it.
“I used to see things like that when I was younger, little black shadowy things that would follow me around. I prayed and they went away.”
The shadowy things I saw were not little and they did not follow me. They were just there and then not. There were grey ones and white ones too, but overall, I just avoided them as much as possible. I took my mother’s advice and prayed, but kids are curious and I wanted to understand.
The internet was a relatively new thing then, and I spent hours tying up our phone line, researching descriptions of what I was seeing. I wouldn’t call them ghosts, that word never felt right, but I did discover a whole wealth of other people who had similar experiences: thoughtforms, imprints, and things caught in between. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it soothed my nerves. I started to learn to tune it out and I also learned not to talk about it. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy.
My grandfather told me a story about the last few months of my Uncle Wilton’s life. While his family was present, he would disarm those visiting him by turning to his side and having full conversations with people no one else could see. When interrupted or asked about it, he would calmly tell his family he was talking to a friend or relative that had passed and to please, shut up. It was rude to interrupt.
I had always enjoyed Uncle Wilton for his willingness to say what no one else was willing to voice. He had a sense of authority about him, as if his mere occupation of a room could control his environment. A word from him, and people listened. It helped that he had a joyous sense of humor, too.
He knew no one else could see who he was talking to, but he didn’t care. He knew he was dying and he wasn’t interested in pretending anymore. My grandfather chuckled as he recounted the story; I watched him wide eyed. I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
As often as I had journeyed out to the farm house, I had never spent the night there. The Big Thicket is a strange place full of contradictions and outdated behaviors. It has a presence that simultaneously welcomes and warns as the sun starts to set. Packs of wild dogs run between fence lines and the swamplands croak at the stars. I am related to half of Batson and have never been met with anything but love there. But I have always felt like something primal lurked just beyond reach, stretching down from the endless dense foliage.
I used the pump and air mattress my aunt kept in a closet at the house in case she needed to stay the night, preparing my bed in a back bedroom that had once belonged to my cousin, Wayne. I tried not to think of him and his passing, instead focusing on the task at hand as the overnight hospice nurse kept me company.
“Will I know when it is about to happen?”
“You might,” she explained as I struggled to fit a too small sheet over the mattress. “His toes and fingers will turn a mottled blue and purple color, he’ll be pale, and his breathing will be in short gasps.”
“… will the rattle stop?” I could hear it faintly from the room next to us.
“Only when he goes, sweetheart.” She tugged the fitted sheet over a corner for me.
“Thank you.” I didn’t ask her the questions I really wanted to know. Would I see him break free? Would his pain stop? Would he move on? What would I do if he didn’t?
“Let me know if you need anything and try to get some sleep.” She left the room and I finished making the bed. It was nice to be mothered at a time like this. She wasn’t doing it to be patronizing; she genuinely seemed to care about the pain my family was in.
I settled under the sheets in my newly purchased pajama bottoms and t-shirt. Curled on my side, I attempted to read a cheap serial novel to distract myself; I was maybe a chapter in when the first roach crawled across my face. Too stunned to scream, I stood and thrashed in mad hysterics on top of the mattress, only to stumble away in a crazed panic when I noticed two more scuttling beneath the covers. I picked up one of my shoes and hammered at them as they scattered away, a sudden mad woman on her hands and knees shrieking war cries while beating the pier and beam floor.
The door opened and the nurse peeked around the frame at me. “Is everything alright?”
I gasped from exertion. “Yeah. Roaches.”
She nodded and left the room. I shook out my sheets, gathered my pillow and books, and set up a makeshift bed out of chairs in the middle of the living room with all the lights on. The leather chair Ben and I used to think was haunted was in the room and would have made for much better sleeping arrangements, but leftover childhood fears and the thought that I wouldn’t be able to see a roach on its surface drove me away. I could handle a lot, but I drew the line at roaches on my face.
Grampy never stirred through all of the sounds that came from the room next to him, but as I tried to find a comfortable position on the chairs, I could imagine his husky laugh filling the space.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
A few years before, my family had convened for an entirely different reason at my grandfather’s house. We’d spent the last several months remodeling the home after Rita left one of the water oaks leaning on the front porch. My mother and aunt had been upset that my grandfather wanted to move out to the country with his childhood best friend, JJ, after being diagnosed with cancer, but be damned if he was going to listen to them. He was ninety years old and JJ was older, both widowers, and they convinced my grandfather’s daughters it would be okay because Wayne wanted to join them.
Wayne was not the most reliable of characters. He’d been hit over the head with a bottle in his youth that had left him mentally stranded at the age of about fifteen. He adored everyone he met and never doubted their motives. He called any woman that took the time to talk to him his “girlfriend,” including his cousins, invited me to dance more times than I can count, and he was willing to drive old men to the hospital if they needed it. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
Unfortunately, as time had passed, his mental state deteriorated. He started drinking at the local bar with some men from town who were known for flirting with illegal activity. He bragged about how well off my grandfather was, came and went unpredictably, and one day my grandfather’s .38 went missing. A short search located it under Wayne’s bed.
So there we all were huddled in a small yellow kitchen drinking coffee and waiting for Wayne to wake up. Ben talked to my brother and paced. The rest of us sat at the table with my grandfather, JJ at the head trying to dispel our nervousness. Wayne was going to live with his mother; he just didn’t know it yet. We worried about the impending emotional reaction.
When he stumbled out and saw us, he was surprised. He laughed that we must be having a party and should have woken him up. My grandfather delivered the words gently and quietly in Wayne’s room. The wailing spread throughout the house, only to be followed an hour later by loud curses and crying. We packed his room as quickly as possible while we waited for his mother to pick him up.
Needing air, I stepped out onto the covered back porch and startled. An older, stooped man wearing a brown hat and grey jacket sat in one of the chairs. He didn’t look at or acknowledge me. His horn rimmed glasses did not reflect the light. His hands rested on a simple cane. He looked real and present, and the air around him felt inundated with purpose. I did not need to be told what I was seeing, but I still found him jarring.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d encountered real ghosts. They always came with a singularity of purpose and, as opposed to the strange wispy figures that drifted about day by day, they were rare and clearly visible. Immediately, I knew he was not there for me. His energy was directed at someone else; I just happened to be able to observe it.
I worried that he was there for my grandfather, but two weeks later, Wayne died from a brain aneurysm at his mother’s house. When we were helping sort his remaining belongings at the farm, I found a picture of the same old man from the porch and asked my mother about it.
“Who is this?”
“That’s Duke. Wayne’s father and Daddy’s brother. He died in a motorcycle accident a long time ago.”
I told her what I had seen on the porch the day Wayne left, and her eyes filled with glassy tears. “He must have been an angel.”
Angels existed in the realm of fairy tales for me, and the awareness that permeated the room Duke had occupied the day Wayne left the farm did not feel divine, just direct. He felt as normal and present as the boxes we were sorting through. I smiled for my mother anyway.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
I did not sleep much the night of the roach invasion. The chairs were uncomfortable, and my back already had issues, so when JJ emerged from his bedroom for the first time since I had arrived, I joined him in the kitchen while the nurses changed shifts.
“Ya hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s get this done then.” He picked up the phone and ordered breakfast from the nearby cafe. Word travels fast in small towns, and the woman who answered insisted she deliver it to us. A short while later, we ate scrambled eggs and sausage out of styrofoam takeaway containers at the kitchen table and drank our coffee in silence. JJ was a kind man, but he adhered to old rules. No conversations took place until the first cup was drained.
We were on our second round when he finally relaxed and looked ready to speak. There is no room for small talk when someone you love is dying.
“Do you think he knew?” I asked.
“Yeah, he prolly knew. He’d been feeling real tired the last few days. That morning, we drank some coffee together and then he went back to bed. That wasn’t like him.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. A story came to my mind that my mother had told me. She’d come to collect my grandfather for a doctor’s appointment and pulled into the driveway at the farm. My aunt had purchased a riding lawn mower to help him get around the property. JJ and Wayne had commandeered two more. The three men were racing them back to the house, hooting and hollering. JJ was in the lead, laughing uproariously while my grandfather shouted after him. Mom didn’t dare interrupt. It was too fun to watch. Sitting with JJ now, I knew he would miss him.
“My wife is gone. My best friend is dying. I just don’t know what else there is left anymore.”
His words fell on the table, heavy and hard. I don’t think he meant to say them to me; he still thought of me as a kid. But after he blinked a few times and took another bite of his eggs, he sat back in his chair and let the moment hang between us.
“It’s not enough, but I’m sorry JJ.” He nodded, 96 year old to young adult and finished his second cup of coffee. What more could be said?
My grandfather almost died that afternoon. I sat in the room and held his darkening fingers. I sang softly to him and whispered all of the words I wished I had said to him when he was still aware. His face gained a waxen quality and he was no longer twitching. His eyes sunk into his face. A few times, I thought he was gone.
My mother and aunt arrived that afternoon and he rallied again. The nurse said that people sometimes hang around for all of their relatives to say goodbye. One of my cousins couldn’t make it until the next day. I hoped for both of their sakes that she arrived in time.
Various family members came and went to pay their respects, cousins I never knew and will never see again. An overflow of pies from my grandfather’s favorite restaurant arrived that we all ate mechanically.
“He wasn’t supposed to eat sugar.” My mother admonished as she took a healthy bite of meringue .
“Well Mom, he did have cancer. I don’t think he cared.” I didn’t tell her that I knew he’d picked up smoking again in his old age and ate fried chicken for lunch every day. My best friend and I had come to visit him by surprise and caught him on the front porch. He held up an arthritic index finger to his lips and grinned. That was a secret best kept until after he wasn’t around to hear her thoughts about it.
“I guess you’re right.” She laughed softly, and together we watched the sun go down out of the kitchen window.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
The next morning’s nurse examined my grandfather.
“He must be waiting for the last one to arrive,” she said.
We all took our turns holding his hand and keeping vigil by his bedside. During the night, the nurse and my uncle moved him into a hospital bed the hospice care facility provided to help keep him comfortable. They very delicately avoided telling us it would also spare the mattress and sheets, but we all knew why it was happening.
I don’t remember most of that day except for long hours in his bedroom whispering quietly and slow walks around the property. I felt dazed and dull. I did not know what I would do with myself after my grandfather died. How does a person just get up and start the rest of their life? My life was suspended between before and after; I just needed a push.
Gradually, my entire family arrived. My aunt and her husband returned with Ben. My brother came in that afternoon. My last cousin finally pulled into the driveway just as evening approached. My mother made more coffee for everyone and we waited, afraid to breathe.
We each entered his room and told him goodbye. I’d had days to say what was needed, but the last words that came to my mouth were a simple promise I would both cherish and regret for years to come. “I’ll take care of everyone.” I could think of nothing more profound. I was too young to realistically care for them all, but I wanted him to know I would try.
Once we all had a chance to speak to him, the nurse quietly ordered us to leave the room. “He’s had a moment with each of you now. He will not want to leave until he is alone. I’m going to give him his medicine so he can rest.”
I followed her orders with the simple obedience of a child. As the last of us said our goodbyes, I exited the front door and circled the house mechanically. The sun was setting over the east Texas swamp. Pecan shells crunched under my feet and the feral cats my grandfather had spent years taming ran at the sound of my footsteps. I struggled to stay outside and give Grampy the distance that was needed.
After a while, it started to get dark and I walked back inside. The room had two entryways, and Ben stood at the opposite doorway to my grandfather’s room, his eyes fixed on my grandfather’s body. He watched him closely but did not enter. I noted his evaluative gaze and wondered if he was worried about the same things I was. What happens now? I stood at the opposite doorframe, obeying the suggestion that my grandfather needed to feel alone. My aunt and mother were in the next room with my other cousins. We were doing our best to give him space.
When my grandfather died, he exited from his chest. It was a sudden burst erupting from his body in a movement akin to when the lid is lifted from a pot left to boil and the vapor escapes. The movement disappeared as fast as it came. The curtain of illness hanging over the room lifted. The nurse checked his pulse and we all held our breath. No one moved.
Her next words were not needed.
“He’s gone.”
The relief was palpable.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
Years later, Ben told my aunt about seeing a man on the back porch the day Wayne left the house. She told my mother, who promptly called me. “You saw it, too!” My cousin and I spent hours on the phone that night, revealing experiences we’d never told anyone and recounting the things our grandfather said to us. Our friendship had become awkward with the strangeness of adolescence, and we hadn’t spoken to each other like this since we were children. Why did we allow ourselves to stay quiet about it so long? So much would have been easier if we had just stuck together.
“Do you think it is in our blood? A gene?” Ben wanted to have kids and he worried for their unborn futures.
“I don’t know. My brother doesn’t talk about it. Your sister doesn’t experience anything. Mom sees some things. But Grampy, Wilton, their whole generation did.” We sat in silence, miles apart on the phone trying to decide what this inheritance meant. Was it our family? Or was it Batson, that small rural community in the swamp, where it was easy to forget the boundaries between reality and what existed beyond all of that abundant primordial shade?
We were on the phone a long time.