"Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them."
9.6.24
Starting the day an hour later than usual, after spending the night at the condo and taking advantage of the fact that P's workday slipped by an hour from her usual 6 a.m. departure. And I have a hearing first thing this morning in PC, via Zoom. Thus, this has to be short.
Probably best. That black dog hasn't really left, and this morning I just wanted to crawl under a rock. For some reason the disastrous summer of 1980 keeps haunting my head, reminding me of the time my mother made probably the hardest decision of my childhood by sending me away to go live with my grandparents, for my own good. Forty-four years ago this week.
Yep, this would be a regular Sad Sack pule-a-thon if I had time.
So instead I'll just mention in passing that the ghosts have broken a long silence to swing into activity again. First, a few days ago the hose on my shop vac disappeared. I'm the only one who ever uses it, and I distinctly remember cleaning and putting it away after the last time I sucked the ash out of the Traeger. But when I went to the basement this week to grab the vacuum and clean out the Traeger again, the hose was long gone.
I know, there may be plausible explanations for that one. P and I just can't come up with one.
Then this morning the little battery powered fake candle in our bedroom window was illuminated. We unscrewed the bulb the last time this happened, to discourage this sort of thing. But our housemates from the Great Beyond apparently screwed it back into the socket some time between five o'clock yesterday and sunrise this morning.
I'm sufficiently superstitious that I get concerned when Lucia, or whoever it is, starts trying to get our attention. We're flying to Massachusetts later today, adding to the tension. Is that it? Or is it the fact that the west side of the house is obviously sinking, losing around an inch since we moved in three years ago? Or is something else disturbing their eternal rest?
I guess when I'm dead and stuck here at Tara for all eternity, I'll have plenty of time to ask.
The whole eternity thing struck me this morning as I drove in the dark up Bopple Hill Road from the condo, past the cemetery there where the road Ts into New York 21.
There are residents under those stones who've been dead twice as long as I've been alive. Maybe longer. It's all fleeting.
Time for that hearing.
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