The place really came together in the next couple of weeks. It was amazing what a fresh coat of paint and a weeding-out of old furniture could achieve. It felt like a new place, and, with all the windows open and the sea breeze blowing through day and night, I was truly beginning to feel like a new person.
During that time I didn’t see or “sense” Ben at all. I’d like to say it was because I reached such a new level of mental health that I didn’t need the crutch of an imagined ghost anymore, but the truth is that I was worried that somehow my conversation with Kristin about finding someone new might have pushed him away, despite the fact that he had suggested the same thing. Which, of course, made me feel like I needed to retract it all and vow to go beyond our wedding promises of “till death do us part” and just commit my life to being a widow.
But that was an idea that didn’t hold much appeal.
And some small part deep inside of me was glad I recognized that. Still, a whole other part of me was still waist-high in memories as I went through his things—and our things—and boxed up everything that gave me even a moment’s pause or a hint of negativity.
“Oh, Ben,” I found myself saying one day as I was working in the master bedroom. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. If you’re really around, please come and tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
The box of clothes I was working on was full and I sealed it and shoved it aside. This was hard but cathartic. I dragged another box over, this one emblazoned with the Amazon Prime logo, and opened it. I was surprised to see it wasn’t empty. At the bottom of the box there was a flat plastic-covered item, almost invisible. I’d overlooked smaller inclusions in Amazon boxes before, so it wasn’t surprising that Ben had too. I reached in and took it out.
It was one of those flat magnets, with an old-fashioned picture of a woman on it and the inscription A CLEAN HOUSE IS A SIGN OF A WASTED LIFE.
He always did say I broke my back cleaning too much. He helped out, of course, but I was a bit OCD about cleaning. That’s annoying for the other people in the house, I know that. It always carries an implication of Help me out or Why aren’t you doing more? Do I have to do everything around here? A person can’t just relax while someone else is working their butt off.
So this was just a little joke from him. Typical and kind of adorable, even while it was heart-wrenching.
I held it to my chest for a moment, then set it aside, deciding I’d put it on my fridge as a reminder of him and as a posthumous joke that would always make me smile when I saw it.
Even if it was somewhat through tears.
Then I returned to my work, everything into the box. I barely even looked at the items, just tossed them in.
“Wait, wait,” I heard behind me. “I always liked that one.”
I was holding a green crop top that I hadn’t worn since my bartending days in my twenties. As soon as I heard the voice, I closed my eyes for a minute, fervently praying it wasn’t just my imagination, and then turned to see him.
Ben was back, sitting on the bed, watching me. Interestingly, he was dressed differently this time. Whereas before he’d been wearing jeans and a T-shirt that read ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, which I’d seen him wear a million times (where was that T-shirt now?), this time he was in jeans still, but with a different shirt, the short-sleeved white cotton one I’d gotten him from Banana Republic. I didn’t always score at that store, but that time I had; the shirt looked great on him.
“This?” I raised the top. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Then it hit me, as it had before. This was Ben. Or this seemed to be Ben. I was talking to Ben.
“It’s sexy,” he said with a lascivious grin.
Man, I loved that grin.
“It’s indecent,” I corrected, though my heart was pounding at the sight of him. “Particularly at my age.”
“Oh, yes. You’re such an old woman.”
“Hey, I’m a widow.” I couldn’t help looking at him accusingly, as if he’d chosen to leave me in this position. Quickly I corrected my expression, but not before he’d taken note of it.
“So you are. The Merry Widow.”
“Not so merry.”
“Oh, hey, that magnet! You found the magnet.” He laughed heartily. “I thought about that damn thing so much more than I should have. Don’t you just hate how Amazon does that, sticks little tiny things in a big box full of paper towels or whatever and you never even know they’re there?”
“Yes, I—”
“I kept meaning to go check that box again, I thought about it right up to the time…” He shook his head, still smiling. “I can’t believe it. You know, if I weren’t here, that’s just the kind of thing you’d think was a sign from me, but honestly, I had no idea where the damn thing was.”
I had to laugh. That was just so Ben. Losing presents, thinking he should do something but not getting around to it. I can’t say literally dying was his style—that part was unprecedented—but he was right, I would have wanted to see it as a sign. And it was—it was a sign that people pretty much are who you think they are, and that transcends life and death.
Which was actually a good thing, because I also thought he loved me, and this was pretty good proof of that.
Except I had this niggling question about why it was so seemingly easy for him to come and go, to be with me then to disappear into a world I couldn’t join him in until the end. “Why don’t you want to stay?”
Confusion crossed his expression, then alit. “You don’t think I want to be here with you?”
I shrugged and was embarrassed to feel my lower lip start to tremble with uncontrolled emotion. “You are now,” I said. “You were before. Why did you leave?”
He pressed his lips together and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s not up to me.”
“Where did you go when you disappeared?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I had raised my voice and immediately thought of Kristin, hearing me yelling to myself. “You’re here, then you’re gone, now you’re back, you’re a kid, you’re my young husband, now you’re … you’re you. How is all of this happening?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “You obviously needed me, so I came. I was sent. I was allowed. I’m not sure how to put it, but time and place are different over there. I can’t give you the answers you want because there’s no way to make you understand.”
“Then make me understand this one thing only: If you’re here now, why can’t you stay?” My voice broke. “At least until it’s time for me to join you. Can’t you just stay? Didn’t you say time is different there? Isn’t a lifetime here just the blink of an eye … there?”
He looked at me sincerely and stood up to move toward me. As before, he grew a little blurrier as he moved close. He must have seen the upset in my eyes and he stepped back as if he understood. “I don’t belong here,” he said earnestly. “You do, but I no longer do. You know that.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Inside, you do. It’s time for you to move forward.”
“No. I can’t.” I shook my head. “None of this makes sense. Every other death I’ve known made some sort of sense—he was out of his misery at last, or she had lived a full life. I can’t make sense of yours. You were so young. You left behind such a young son, who misses you so much. And me…”
He looked sad, an emotion I had kind of thought he couldn’t feel anymore. “I heard what Kristin said to you. About how brave you’ve been and what a good job you’ve done with Jamie.”
Hearing him say our son’s name broke a whole new level of my heart. A place I hadn’t really realized existed. “Did you see?” I asked, like a child wondering if there is really a Santa Clause. “Have you been watching us?”
It actually was like Santa, I realized. Did he see when we were sleeping? Did he know when we were awake? That’s kind of how I’d always thought of God and angels, and I guess I was labeling Ben an angel now because “ghost” seemed so harsh and spooky.
When I was young, I had an old record album of haunted house sounds. It was a Disney production, much older than I was, but I’d found it at a garage sale I’d gone to with my mom and I was captivated by the moody, Halloweeny cover and simply had to have it.
And I listened to that thing like I was a teenage girl in the sixties listening to the Beatles. Don’t ask me how or why, it was crazy that I did, but I could listen to those creepy creaks and howls and boos from dawn till dusk.
It was pretend then. I loved it. I think we human beings want to feel things, but safely. That’s why horror movies and thrillers are so popular. We feel scared or tense or on the edge of our seats but we know, even going into it, that everything will be resolved in the end. It’s a few hours of safely feeling.
So it was with my haunted house record—I’d listen and I’d feel, then I’d go upstairs and put on my Carter’s pajamas, watch some silly sitcoms or movies with my parents, then go to sleep, carrying with me the Cheers episode we’d watched, or Trading Places, rather than the ghosts.
Now I couldn’t bear to associate Ben with those sad, lonely ghost cries I remembered from my childhood. And there was nothing to suggest he was suffering or would moan through the night like they did, so I was being morbid about this anyway, but I still preferred to look at him as my own private guardian angel now.
“No, I haven’t been watching you,” he said, and in so doing deflated my guardian-angel hopes. “I don’t have that kind of control between worlds.”
“But I swear sometimes I have felt you around me. Was that my imagination? The crazed thoughts of my grief?”
“No,” he said gently. “Of course not. I have sometimes felt the pull of your heart and I’ve been drawn to it. That’s the best I can explain. So, yes, I have been there when you’ve needed me. I hope. Maybe not every time, because”—he shook his head—“we all know that’s not how it works. Unfortunately.”
There was comfort in that. Just in knowing I’d been right when I’d felt him. I hadn’t been alone at my times of greatest sorrow. “But you can’t control it at all? Is it every time I’m really sad?”
“You tell me,” he said knowingly. “Have I been here every time you were really sad?”
“No…”
“No.” He gave a rueful smile.
Now, that was honesty. I was glad he didn’t try to dress it up like something prettier than the sow’s ear it was. He couldn’t be here for me reliably. For all the great things that spirit was, or could be, it failed in the mutual-support department. Mortality had that all over spirit.
“Do you ever need me?” I asked, half afraid of the answer. “Are you ever scared there?”
His smile was so clear and genuine it touched my heart. “I’m at peace, baby, this isn’t that hard for me, but it’s rough knowing how hard it is for you. If there was any way for me to stay by your side until you were okay, I would. You know I would. But I can’t. I don’t even know how long I have.”
I wanted to say that was cruel, that no one could reasonably withstand this, but how could I say that when I had him at all? Most people didn’t get this. I was exceptionally blessed and it was time for me to act like it.
This was the time to ask him all those things I had ever wanted to ask, about him, about his feelings, about how to raise Jamie without him, what to tell him as a message from his father. So much.
But before I could speak, he did. “But I’m here to make you happy. To help you get happy. To make sure you’re going to be happy for the rest of your life. I promised you that when we got married, and things have taken a little turn, but there’s no reason that lets me off the hook now.”
I gave a nod. “Right. So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make sure you stop mourning and move on with your life.”