A Haunting Tale

In 1998, my eldest brother Rich was diagnosed with cancer. At the same time, my mother’s health began to take a turn for the worse. She had suffered health problems for quite some time and this particular year she became even more helpless. Dad tried his darnedest to care for her as long as he could. Rich died in late August, less than six weeks before my mother’s death in early October.

My brother Ted and I worried so much about dad. Losing a child is something no parent expects or should ever have to go through, no matter the age. The loss of his wife compounded dad’s agony. She had been his rock, his home, for the better part of his life. Ted and I later revealed that we both secretly felt it would not be much longer until dad joined his beloved wife and son.

Dad had never lived alone. He moved from his parents’ home, to the Civilian Conservation Corps, to his first marriage with Rich’s mother, to the Army infantry in the Philippines during World War II, to a painful divorce and back home with his parents who helped raise his son, then later to his second marriage with my mother. Now he was left to wander an empty house. Dad found the silence, the loneliness, and the profound grief to be overwhelming at times.

Then one day, dad told us a story. It was the middle of the night and as typical, he was reading a book. Mom’s room was next door, a small private room where she kept a desk and an antique maple twin bed. You know the kind, with heavy iron bed rails and four wooden slats spaced evenly apart to support the box spring and mattress. Well that night dad heard a loud “bang” coming from mom’s room. He instinctively called out to the dark house: “Loretta, is that you?”

The next morning dad discovered that one of the slats had fallen out of mom’s bed, as they often did. But in the past this only happened when someone sat on the bed, or possibly when the bed’s occupant turned over while sleeping. Dad was convinced mom had returned.

Over the next several months, he related stories of his experiences in the house. Once he was whittling in the basement when he was sure someone stood right behind him, watching his work. Another time he swore he heard voices. He repeatedly sensed at least one and sometimes two presences in the house. “Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” he told me. At first he was frightened, then he began to engage in one-sided conversations with the visitors. Was there anyone in the house with dad? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter one bit. Real or imagined, dad was comforted by the idea of his wife and son returning to him. He lived another six years, all alone in that house, during which time he spoke to mom and Rich frequently. He was absolutely convinced of their presence.

A few months before dad died, he passed out while shopping at the grocery store. The paramedics took him to the emergency room and I was called to his side. Dad always hated hospitals and had no use for all the fussing and carrying on that occurred in those places. The emergency room doctor said she would be willing to discharge him, provided there would be someone at home with him that night. Dad replied without hesitation: “My wife is there!” Although I knew there was no physical presence in the house, as the doctor expected, I said nothing. My mother’s spiritual presence was good enough for dad; it got him released.

One of my family duties, something mom and I shared in years past, was the responsibility of caring for family graves. After mom died, I visited Fort Logan National Cemetery regularly to bring flowers and decorations. At that cemetery are buried my grandfather, an uncle, my brother, my mother, and now my father too. Before dad died, whenever I visited mom’s grave I talked to her, often blubbering away as I conveyed stories of the events in our lives, both good and bad. Like dad, I believed her spirit was right there with me. Yet not once since dad has been gone have I felt that presence at the cemetery, or anywhere else for that matter. Once they were reunited, I’m certain they left this Earth together. Their grave is now simply a marker to help remind us of the love that has moved from the suburbs of Denver, all the way to the stars.