Afterlife

Each picture hung on the dimly lit pastel painted wall. Each picture dissolved into a pale white twisted ghoulish face. I tried not to look at them. Desperately, I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep.

The next morning sun light filtered into the small room. The pictures looked plain and ordinary. No traces of even a shape resembling what I saw at night could be found.

Grandma explained the story behind each of the pictures in the bedroom. The room was full of pictures of my cousins, uncles and aunts. Some of them had passed away, while others were my mother's age. Nowhere in her accounts explained why the picture looked so scary at night.

The room we slept in when we visited our grandparents, had once belonged to my great grandmother. Before that the room had been my Mom's room. Mom never saw all the pictures in the room turn into ghouls when she slept there.

The ghastly faces appeared every night we stayed over Grandma's. I looked across the balcony at the graveyard behind the house, with suspicion. Mom assured me that the graveyard was quite safe. She and her best friend use to play there often when they were kids.

Some of our relatives were buried in the cemetery behind the house. All those relatives were on the English side of the family. Great Grandmother was buried on the other side of the city. She was Irish.

After finishing high school, I visited my grand parents sometimes without my parents. Then I could sleep in the other room that use to be my Mom's after Great Grandmother came to live there. That room was much better to sleep in. The pictures did not not turn into ghouls in the room Great Grandmother did not sleep in.

Great Grandmother would go on and on about anything that she was unhappy about. She loved a good fight. Perhaps she did not approve of me and my brother sleeping in her bedroom.

As the years passed, our relatives died, so did my two youngest brothers. Grandmother made a memorial to each of them.

A large picture of each brother was accompanied by a red rose in a vase, on the feudal oak counter in the living room. Grandmother was convinced that when you died that your story ended.

"But, they have gone onto heaven." I objected.

"Are you sure?" Grandmother asked.

"Yes." I answered. "The day after Marky died, he came to Mom and told her that there is a tunnel of light. It opens into a beautiful garden. He wanted to know if he should wait for us or go on ahead. We stopped crying long enough to tell him to go on ahead. We'd catch up to him someday."

"Are you sure he said that?" Grandmother asked.

"I don't know." I answered. "He talked to Mom. He didn't talk to me."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were right." Grandmother answered dreamily.

Grandmother out lived her friends and her brother and her sister. She felt very alone.

"But Grandpa is still here." I protested. "So, is Great Grandmother."

"Great Grandmother?" Grandmother snapped. "You are talking nonsense!"

"But, Great Grandmother has always been here."

"I think it is time for you to get going." Grandmother ended our visit abruptly.

It was a while before I visited again. Grandmother was happy to see me. Her opening statement shocked me.

"I've been thinking about death." Grandmother explained gently.

"I'd like to think that you would go on living forever." I answered.

"People don't live on this planet forever," Grandmother smiled, "Even if you want them to. What are your religious beliefs?"

"Ummm--probably not what you'd like them to be." I answered knowing this was probably a trick question. "I believe in God and Jesus like I'm suppose to, but I don't feel excited like I am suppose to at church. Christian's never seem to have a logical reason for believing what they believe. I need a logical reason."

"So do I." Grandmother smiled. "I feel the same way."

"You do?" I had answered the question correctly.

"You are more like me than you will ever know, or would want to admit." Grandmother laughed. "Do you believe in an afterlife?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because Aunt Cora talked to me at her funeral." I answered.

"How come I didn't see her?" Grandmother asked.

"We sat in the back because we arrived late." I continued. "She was hard to see and wasn't shaped like Aunt Cora. When I said hello, I was surprised when she answered back in Aunt Cora's voice, and vocabulary. She just came to see her funeral. She told me to be quiet when it started, and was gone after the funeral ended."

"How did you know your Grandpa was still here?"

"I saw a shadow in the house." I explained. "Actually, it looked more like a grey cloud, but it was more complicated than Aunt Cora's. I talked to it. Grandpa answered. He is waiting for you. He didn't want you to be alone."

"How sweet of him." Grandmother said.

Grandmother looked so pleased that I didn't have the heart to tell her Grandpa wasn't there anymore. Great Grandmother seemed to be missing too. "You're not mad at me are you?" I asked, remembering the results of our prior conversation.

"No." Grandmother said. "The last time I was, but now it is different. What do you think of gardening?"

"When I was a kid, I hated gardening." I said. "I didn't see why had to shovel clay while everyone else on the street were free to play. Now that I've grown, I spend much time in the garden. We've been working on making a garden for Mom that looks as good as your garden."

"There's not much left to my garden." Grandmother argued. "I let the grass grow over where the Japanese lanterns use to be. The day lilies and tulips should have been divided years ago. The rose bed needs to be cleaned out."

"The mum's still look like the way I remember them." I interrupted.

"Garden's are an important part of your families tradition." Grandmother said. "Your great grandfather had a garden, as did his great grandfather. Promise me that you will keep this tradition alive."

"Yeah, OK," I answered.

"I will tell you the story." Grandmother declared. "I was in the kitchen, doing the dishes, when I heard John's voice from behind me."

"Anne, look at the garden." he said.

"But John, the garden's gone to ashes." Grandmother answered without turning around to look at Grandpa. "Gardens take a lot of work. I'm too old. I just can't do it any more."

"Look out the window and look at the garden." he repeated firmly.

"All right John, I'll look, even if it is pointless." Grandmother looked out the kitchen window.

The tulips where in bloom at the same time as the roses. "It's beautiful!" She looked at the brightly heavy flowered garden with awe.

"Grandpa has been waiting these past seven years to take me to the garden." Grandmother finished her story. "If you believe in nothing else, promise me that you will believe in the garden."

I promised that I would. Grandmother told me it was time for me to go. So, I left thinking about Grandmother's story, the garden, and all those creepy pictures on the walls of Great Grandmother's bedroom. Why had Grandpa and Great Grandmother suddenly left the house?

That was the last time I would ever visit Grandmother at her house. She went to the hospital, and then to the nursing home, and back to the hospital during a period of time that seemed like forever.

I took down the pictures that had haunted me for so long, after Grandmother's funeral. "The house is empty now." I said to Mom. "Grandmother is gone. Grandpa and Great Grandmother are gone too."

"That's good." Mom answered. "I'd hate to think about leaving this house haunted."

"I understand why Grandpa stayed around after he died, but what about Great Grandmother?" I asked. "Why did she stick around?"

"Your Great Grandmother said on her deathbed that she would prove to your Grandmother that there was life after death." Mom answered. "She'd come back and haunt her, if that was what it took."

"Did Grandmother see her?" I asked.

"Yes, she told me she did." Mom answered. "She saw her around the same time she had that experience with Grandpa."

Great Grandmother appeared in enough likeness of what she once looked like for Grandma to recognize her?" I asked.

"She must have." Mom answered.

"What did Great Grandmother look like?"

"She was shorter than you." Mom replied. "She always wore her hair in a bun."

"How come Grandmother didn't tell me about it?" I asked.

"Grandmother didn't want to scare you." Mom answered.

"Grandmother never scared me." I laughed.

Great Grandmother did. Her only purpose of haunting the house was to rescue her daughter's soul. Now, I understood why Grandpa and Great Grandmother left. Their job was finished, when Grandmother believed in an afterlife.