There is a ghost in the house. They do not have a name, they do not have a gender.
Your first response is to call it a him, but then over time it changes to her. You don’t know why. A female presence seems more calming perhaps. A balm to the constant sun burn of the world that exists outside the walls of your home. You call her Friday, after the Robinson Crusoe character. Remember, Friday started out as a him, which makes sense… but now as a her, and Friday still sticks regardless. You tried out other names, but they felt strange in your mouth, like tasting the edge of the house key as you hold your keys in your mouth to shuffle in the door of the house with the groceries. A house is not a home, but a home can be anywhere, and this home has a ghost.
Friday is quiet. Trying to define who she is is like trying to define what a blue sky in ski country is. Well, yes, it’s blue, and yes, it’s pretty, but beyond that, it is just a sky that attempts to defy description without one experiencing it themselves. Likewise, Friday is a ghost, and quiet, but in the end, still just an indescribable ghost. She is not like the Ghostbusters’ version, all glowing and ethereal, but instead, an unseen force, like a stray burst of wind which was caught inside the the walls of the house and hasn’t figured it’s way back out the door yet.
She caught the fly in your house. That is how you met her. The fly was buzzing through the rooms, loud and insistent, screaming for attention like a miniature chainsaw with wings. Three hours of it, and it had invaded your consciousness like Genghis Khan, running roughshod over any scrap of ability to actually work remotely. The fly stopped, in the middle of the room, held in place without the wings buzzing incessantly. As you marveled at the oddness of it, the small voice asked what they should do with it.
{should I hurt it}, it asked.
The sound of the voice, so much like a child, but carrying the deep weight of the bottom of the ocean, the weight of only itself, like Atlas shrugging the earth onto the other shoulder, does not surprise you and only invites response.
“No, it should go outside where it belongs,” you respond quietly, narrowly registering a response to question barely understood.
Without another whisper, the fly meanders towards the door, quite confused as to how it is traveling without meaning to. It tries to buzz it’s wings intermittently, but whatever force is holding the fly, holds them still after a few confused flicks. A few minutes later, after you send a lengthy email that no one is going to read, you hear the voice again.
{why did you choose to let it go?}
Again, the voice should scare you, disembodied and aimless, seemingly arriving from the walls and the carpet simultaneously, but it doesn’t. It is soft and gently caressing your ears, apologizing for the act of being heard as it happens.
“Live and let live,” you reply. “Already too much death in the world, killing a fly wouldn’t make anything better, at least that is what my mom would say.”
{perhaps}
You sit, leaning back in your chair, not looking at the computer screen, starting to suspect that this is what a mental breakdown is like for the person having it. You wonder if working from home for so long is causing damage that you were not aware of. Maybe it was carbon monoxide poisoning or something similar. You should tell your mom about your ghost, but for some reason, you don’t.
“Why won’t you say something?” You ask the air.
{it looked like you were thinking}
As ghosts go, Friday is a good ghost. There when you need to talk, but not always on top of you like a bad roommate or an incessant relative. You pause in the hallway after you mother’s funeral, buckling to your knees in grief. The floor catches you roughly, as the tears stream down your face. You know that Friday is with you. You don’t know how you know, but you can sense it.
{death is not so bad. i think i was alive once, it is hard to tell. but i don’t think the death part was hard}
“Is my mom out there?” I manage between the sobs.
{somewhere. nothing ends}
“Everything ends.”
{you will think differently someday}
“When is that?”
{when you are dead}
The next week, the tears don’t come as often. You still cry whenever you think of your mom, but you are able to keep your mental fingers out of the wound. It is scabbing up in an ugly way, as loss usually does. It will hurt for years to come. Losing your father was different. He had been so ill for so long, and the end was merciful. Not like your mom. She was vibrant, active, and wonderfully alive. Until she wasn’t.
“Friday?” You call out in the night, the dark at the edges of the room stretches out like a cinema shot, a scene lengthening from within a horror movie. The walls are far away, but pressing inwards like a vise. You need someone, even if it is a ghost.
{i am here}
“Why does it hurt so much?”
{you have to feel. it is your purpose}
“Do you feel anything?”
{i feel your presence}
You fall asleep knowing that at least someone is watching, even if you don’t know who it is. It is better than no one at all.
A month later, you are trying to get dressed like a normal human being and clean the disaster of your home. It is less a home and more of a dump at this point. Mess spread like an infection, it’s fungal arms reaching like tree roots incessantly chasing after sprinkler lines, taking over spaces slowly by duplicating detritus and creating extra layers that only an archaeologist would understand. As you are midway through the living room, the gut punch of loss hits again, and you double over in wracking sobs remembering a story you would have laughed about with your mom. The soiled mass of paper plates and to-go containers clutched in your hand floats away, finding its way into the trash can. The dishes find their way to the sink, and the dirty clothes wrangle themselves into the hamper.
Something like a hand brushes your forehead and cradles you gently.
{small steps are still steps}
“I talked to her everyday.”
{you can talk to me everyday}
“Until I can’t.”
{until you can’t}
“How can I get over something like this? How do people carry on after those they love in their lives are taken away?”
{nothing ends}
“You said that already.”
{i am answering your question. it might lessen in strength, but it is a part of you now. forever. you will carry it like a scar on your knee or a memory in your mind}
“How? How do people survive?”
{a choice}
You wipe at your nose with the back of your hand, and suddenly tissues appear over your shoulder. You take them gingerly, unsure how it would feel when they brush against Friday, instead your fingers find nothing but kleenex.
“A choice of what?”
{a choice to believe that nothing ends, including the love you carry. a choice that you don’t end because of it}
“People kept telling me at the funeral that she was with me. It is such bullshit.”
Silence, but another gentle caress on my forehead.
“She is not with me. She is not here to tell me everything is going to be ok. She is not here to see anything of me in the future.”
{you are right}
“So how can I do this?”
{make the choice to take another small step}
“On what?”
{anything. but for now, you can lie here, and remember. it’s ok}
So you do. And a few days later, you finally are able to leave the house for the first time. It releases you gently to the evening air, and the dark is comforting in its own way. You manage to go grocery shopping and make it home without shedding a single tear.
{the apples look good}
“They do, don’t they,” you respond. You smile at the Honeycrisps, and set them gently on the table in your mom’s wooden bowl. It’s where they belong, after all.
And for some reason it makes the house a home again.