Most of my friends are aware of the delight both Kevin and I take in internet shopping.  We buy nearly everything we need on line.  We even found each other there.  Outside of clothes and food, the net is our one-stop shopping source.  Given this, I wasn’t surprised when Kevin came home from work and told me he’d bought a new lawnmower on line.

You see, Kevin is having some problems with his cervical spine and is facing some minor surgery on his knee this week.  Our yard is a little large and a day of yardwork leaves him in a good deal of discomfort.  Sears was having a sale on their riding mowers and was offering free delivery to boot.  With $500 off the original price, he couldn’t resist.  One click and that baby was on its’ way to us.

Imagine my surprise when I came home from work to find something that could plow the north forty nestled in our shed.

Here, you see Kevin bringing The Beast out to begin the job.  What used to take him an hour, he now does in ten minutes.

It’s a good thing this puppy has reverse.  Handling the delicate curves around the gardens could get a little tricky.

He has to move all of the side patio furniture to get it through so he can cut the front.

This is the front yard.  Yes, that’s all there is to it.  Most of our property extends behind the house, so watching him cut the tree lawn out there is a bit embarrassing.  The Beast is just  so large!

You still don’t think this is a huge mower?  Here it is in comparison to my car.

Yes, I know Minis are small.  The point is, my husband’s lawn mower is as big as my car.

I don’t mind, though.  He’s happy and there’s less wear and tear on his body.   You’d think we would have learned from this though, wouldn’t you?  Wait until you see what we bought next.

When my elderly in-laws put out the call for assistance to get them from their winter home in Ft. Myers, Florida to their summer home in Michigan, we didn’t hesitate to run to their aid.  My father-in-law was eighty-seven and my mother-in-law was almost eighty-four.  They’d been independent until recently when some new health issues had made it unsafe for them to make this long drive themselves.  It would not be a problem for us to help out.

On Friday morning of Memorial Day weekend, we boarded a plane in Cleveland, Ohio for the southern regions of Florida.  Since my husband, Kevin, and I are still ridiculously conjoined, we should have realized things may not go quite as planned when we discovered our seats were at opposite ends of the plane, just shortly before boarding.  (Disclaimer to my male readers:  please continue reading even though I have to talk of some female issues.  You’ll understand the necessity of this and I will try not to offend anyone’s senses.)  Next problem that I encountered, soon after boarding the plane, was that the Goddess of Menopause decided to play another practical joke on me and bless me with an excessively heavy flow that would only last the duration of this trip.  Since Kevin and I had already agreed to switch driving positions on the way home every two hours, I was sure this issue would be dealt with accordingly.

Upon our arrival in the south, we helped my in-laws stow the porch furniture and button up the winter home.  We headed to bed early, where the still ridiculously conjoined Youngs discovered that our sleeping arrangements were two twin beds pushed together; one about four inches lower than the other.  This was not conducive to the snuggling we are used to, but we persevered.

We arose on Saturday morning at o’dark thirty.  With the plan being to leave by six a.m., showers were forgone.  (Once again, I must ask you to bear with me for some personal information that must be disclosed for the sake of the story.  I’ll try not to offend.)  Since I was thrown off of my usual morning routine, a bowel movement was not possible for me.  I knew what was going to happen to me because of this.  I was going to blow up with gas; gas that would have nowhere to go.

We finished closing up the house and loaded their van with everything that they, and their annoying little dog, would need once they reached Michigan.  We headed out, right on schedule.  My mother-in-law is a smoker and we quickly learned that we had to crack our windows when she lit up, as she had no intentions of being a polite smoker.  I’d been smoke free for seven months; Kevin for three.  The van absolutely reeked.  We politely kept our mouths shut.  We were not going to change any behaviors in an eighty-four year old woman.  It wasn’t worth the hassle.

Their van was the next obstacle I encountered.  For the record, I drive a Mini Cooper; small, close to the road and handles like a go-cart.  When I got behind the wheel of the van for the first time, I was a little taken aback.  This van has two steps to get up into it, extra length on the back and one of those roofs that make it tall enough in which to stand.  I felt like I was driving a semi-truck.  The steering was loose and the wind kicked me all over the place.  I couldn’t speed like I’m used to doing.  I could barely maintain the speed limit.  I was sweating profusely at times.  Kevin seemed like he was miles away from me in the seat next to mine.  We often reached over the abyss just to hold hands, but even this small gesture put quite a strain on our tendons.  This was one big, freaking van.

So, to recap:

No shower, so I felt grimy.  Abdominal distention was beginning due to the excessive gas build-up.  Stopping in disgusting, nasty roadside rests every two hours to change drivers.  This was where I got to experience the joys of caring for feminine hygiene necessities in much less than sanitary conditions.  I’m driving a vehicle that made me very uncomfortable.  The Grand Canyon is separating Kevin and I.

And my mother-in-law lit up.

Our goal for the day was to get to Beckley, West Virginia by evening.  This was the only place Kevin could get reservations for us on Memorial Day weekend that met the dual needs of a non-smoking room for Kevin and myself, along with a smoking room that allowed pets and was handicapped accessible for the in-laws.  We had a long haul ahead of us.

And my mother-in-law lit up.

Somewhere in South Carolina in a roadside rest men’s room, Kevin lost his glasses.  We didn’t discover this until about an hour after the deed and were unsure as to exactly which stop we had been in, so we just kept driving.  He had his prescription sunglasses, so he could still drive; at least until dark.  Our driving rotation would necessitate me taking over at dark, no matter whose turn it was or how tired either one of us were.

Around five o’clock, while I was taking my turn at the wheel, I heard the sound of a can being opened in the backseat.  It was cocktail hour for the geriatrics.  Something as inconvenient as a long road trip wasn’t going to stop them from imbibing.  A bottle was opened, ice taken from a cooler and the mix was added.  God love them.

And my mother-in-law lit up.

Our next obstacle proved to be the electric seat on the driver’s side.  Kevin is significantly taller than I am, so we needed to make many adjustments each time we switched drivers.  This control decided to become temperamental, and then completely quit working by the end of the evening.  Of course, it quit in Kevin’s position.  Not good for a short woman.

So, dark began to descend upon us.  We stopped to change drivers one last time.  We have now been on the road for almost fifteen hours.

Let’s recap!

No shower, so I felt grimy.  Abdominal distention was reaching astronomical proportions due to the excessive gas build-up.  I looked like I was six months pregnant and was suffering some severe pains.  Stopping in disgusting, nasty roadside rests every two hours to change drivers.  This was where I got to experience the joys of caring for feminine hygiene necessities in much less than sanitary conditions.  I’m driving a vehicle that made me very uncomfortable.  The Grand Canyon is separating Kevin and I.  Kevin lost his glasses and I was driving the last leg of the journey, out of turn.  The in-laws had cocktail hour.  The seat control broke and I was stretching both arms and legs as far as I could to reach the steering wheel and pedals while sitting on the very edge of the seat.

And my mother-in-law lit up.

I’m now driving on the West Virginia turnpike in the dark.  Up the mountain, down the mountain, around the curve.  The van strained uphill and flew like greased lightning when going downhill.  I had forty minutes until we hit the hotel.  What could happen now?  Hadn’t we dealt with enough already?  No, we hadn’t.  That’s when the pouring rain began.  In the dark.  In the mountains.  With a seat that wouldn’t allow me to properly reach the controls.  With severe gas cramps desperately trying to distract me.

When the rain stopped, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I was physically miserable, but we only had fifteen minutes to go.  I actually started compiling this story in my head at this time.  I thought about all that had transpired so far and how funny it would be.  I knew it would be a bit long for the basic internet reader’s attention span, but I knew it would be worth it.  We had been through a lot and I had nearly gotten us to the hotel.  We were home free.

That’s when the deer ran out in front of me and I peed my pants.

*This is a reposting, from another site, of my real life experiences with a ghost…or two.  Originally posted in six parts, I’ve just combined them all in one as I’m moving things over here.  If you’ve read this before, somewhere else, I apologize.  If you’re new to this series, I hope you get the shivers!

PART  ONE

First of all, let me get one thing straight.  I never believed in ghosts until I ended up living with them.  There’s a logical explanation for everything, right?  Unfortunately, I often could not come up with one to explain the happenings in the home that we shared with “Mrs. Greer”.

We don’t know if it was really Mrs. Greer who was visiting us or not.  We just knew that the previous owner of our house was a Mrs. Greer who died in the living room of natural causes about five years before we moved in.  She became our scapegoat.

The first time she made her presence known was really quite mild in light of what she did to us in later years.  This is the story of her first visit.

Four of us lived in this house; my three children and myself.  My oldest, Lisa, was about fifteen at the time of this particular incident.  My younger two kids were off staying the weekend with friends.  It was a Friday morning and Lisa was ordered into the task of cleaning her room while I ran some errands.  She greeted me at the door on my return, quite pale.  She then proceeded to tell me how, in the course of cleaning her room, a can of deodorant kept flipping upside down on her dresser.  She’d set it right side up and when she looked back, it would be upside down again.  Yeah.  Right. I was sure that she was just looking for an excuse not to finish cleaning her room.  Cleaning was not her strong point, after all.  She was adamant that she wasn’t doing this and that it was happening on its own.

I knew by now that something was going on, because I’d never seen her so shaken.  I figured that if what she said was true, it was due to us living in a very old house where the floors settle and things can appear to move when they are actually only shifting due to the natural order of things…in an old house.  She wouldn’t go back into her room without me.  I had to prove my point to her, so upstairs we went.  Sure enough, there was a can of deodorant, upside down, on her dresser.  I righted the container and wedged it very tightly between her purse and a pile of school books.  I then locked the door and put the only key to the room in my pocket.

She followed me downstairs and was almost leech-like with her physical attachment to me.  All I could think of was “For God’s sake, kid!  You’re fifteen!  Get a grip and get off my back!” I knew something was really up with her when she spent the next several hours cleaning the kitchen with me.  Remember, cleaning wasn’t her bag, to put it mildly.

After about two hours of cleaning, I went upstairs to the bathroom and upon seeing her closed bedroom door, remembered the key in my pocket.  I’m glad I’d emptied my bladder before entering that room, because otherwise I would have become incontinent, I’m sure.  I turned the key and just peeked in…and there was the deodorant can, firmly lodged between the purse and the pile of books…and upside down.  No way that happened because the house settled.  Nosiree Bob.  Unh unh.  No chance. I remember feeling my stomach tighten and finding it hard to breathe.  My heart started pounding.  I locked the door again, without fixing the deodorant this time.  What if it turned over, again, like Lisa said?  I couldn’t deal with that.

So, Lisa went off to a girlfriend’s house for the weekend and I was left alone in this big, old haunted house for the first time ever.  I remember clutching a crucifix to my chest at night while I was trying to fall asleep, with “trying” being the operative word, here.  I couldn’t bring myself to go back into Lisa’s room all weekend.

This was really such a mild event compared to some of the things Mrs. Greer put us through over the next fifteen years or so.  I’m glad I couldn’t see into the future; to the things that would scare the living daylights out of me and mine and those who hung out at our home.  Stay tuned.  It’s time to write Mrs. Greer out of my system.

PART TWO

Living with a ghost in the house presents unusual challenges.  If you read Part 1 of this, you’ll remember my daughter Lisa was fifteen.  She and I decided to keep our ghost a secret from the younger kids who were about seven and ten at the time.  We were both scared enough for all of us, after all.  We figured that if the little ones knew, we’d both end up with one or both of them in our beds at night, too.  This was an easy task for awhile, as Mrs. Greer seemed to focus her energies on Lisa at first.  Things would disappear and show up two or three months later, right where they should have been in the first place or in some highly unusual spot.  We searched high and low for her make-up bag, only to have it reappear right on her dresser at a later date.  One shoe turned up missing and was found several months later on a top shelf in the pantry.  She’d wake up in the morning to find all of her stuffed animals (which were plentiful) had somehow worked their way from her dresser to join her in bed.  Were we freaked?  You better believe it.  I began to think poltergeist.  I had read somewhere that they focused and fed off of the energy of adolescence.  Lisa certainly had plenty of that going on.

Eventually, Mrs. Greer started turning her mischief towards me.  In retrospect, it was always when I was in a relationship that created bad energy, or bad vibes if you will.  Maybe it was her way of telling me to get these guys the hell out of Dodge.  Many of my boyfriends didn’t believe me when I told them there was a ghost in the house, but I guarantee they believed by the time we broke up.  The brother of one boyfriend saw a stuffed animal jettison across the living room on its own before he’d even heard about us living with an apparition.  My stuff began to disappear and turn up in the same fashion that Lisa’s stuff did.  The spaghetti colander that was missing for three months turned up right in it’s original spot in the cupboard.  A bottle of perfume gone and then back where it belonged.  There were more things stolen and returned than I could ever remember.  I wish I’d kept a journal.

I dated one guy that she disliked more than others, I think.  I’d started smoking again with this guy, after having been quit for seven years.  We were sitting on my bed one night, smoking, and the pack of cigarettes just vanished.  Not right before our eyes, mind you.  They were just gone.  We tore the bed up, we looked under it.  We looked in dresser drawers.  Nowhere to be found.  The next day I continued the search.  It was just too odd.  I finally lifted the mattress up and there they were.  Right in the middle of the area between the mattress and the box springs.  Somehow she’d been able to get them in there with us sitting on the bed.  Freak out time again!

So, Lisa and I kept our secret from the little ones.  At least until they were old enough to be told that some of the things they experienced in our home were due to a ghost.  She and I would give them logical explanations for what they experienced, then we would go to each other and say “Mrs. Greer is at it again.”

All of this was still pretty mild stuff.  We hadn’t even seen her…yet.

PART THREE

This is a reposting of a six part series about my real life experiences with ghosts.  I’ll be posting two parts daily for three days.  Every word is true.  For those of you who have read this before, I apologize.  For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy.

As I said, Lisa and I kept the secret from the younger two kids for quite awhile.  It started to get more difficult as they experienced more and heard hushed whispers from the adults in the house.  Faces drained of blood after some of these experiences were more difficult to conceal.

My bedroom in this house was the renovated third floor attic.  I had my own set of stairs, right in my room.  Mrs. Greer seemed to delight in walking down these stairs in front of men she didn’t care for.  Several reported to me that they saw a woman in a long, white dress sort of “float” down the stairs.  In retrospect, it was kind of funny to see some of these macho men melt down.  A big, hulking construction worker, insisting I go to the bathroom with him.  Men who couldn’t stay the night for fear of my ghost showing up again.  I could always get a laugh out of this, but that was only because she had shown herself to them, not me.  Anytime she did something to me, I was as terrified as the next person.  I would spend several days looking over my shoulder and jumping at shadows until I could settle down.  I had no choice.  It was our home.  I had kids to raise.  I couldn’t afford to move.

Then I saw her for the first time.

To be honest, I couldn’t make out more than a white shape.  But who else could it have been?  I was sitting at my vanity table, putting on my make-up.  I had leaned my left arm on the table as I hunkered in close to the mirror to put on my mascara.  Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a white form rush out of the wall behind the table. It went right through my left arm, from wrist to shoulder.  It was everything you’ve heard about in the spooky movies, folks.  Ice, ice cold!  Just from the wrist to the shoulder.  I’ll never forget it.  My mascara went all over my face.  I jumped out of my chair and started jumping around my bedroom, rubbing my left arm and screaming “No!  Get out of my house, you bitch!  I live here, now!  Get the hell out and leave us alone!” I don’t know how long I carried on in that manner.  I’ve never been so shook up in my whole life!  My left arm seemed to take on new meaning to me.  It didn’t feel any different, but I knew it was. It had been passed through, without a doubt.  It took more than just a few days to settle down from that one.

Of course, the younger kids had heard my uproar and came running.  Time to lie, again.  It was getting more difficult as Kristin was about twelve at this time and had had several experiences, herself.  Things of hers had disappeared, also.  A favorite shirt, hung in her closet, turned up a couple of months later, hanging in the basement, of all places.  One of her regular sleep-over girlfriends started having experiences.  The TV in her room would turn on in the middle of the night.  They would wake up to Three’s Company at 4am and check the TV Guide the next day to make sure it was really on and they didn’t dream it.  They’d turn it off, and it would turn back on to another station.  Over and over again.

One night, Kristin had a bad cold.  She was coughing very hard.  I’d given her some cough syrup, but it wasn’t working very well.  The way she tells the story, she was coughing and coughing and coughing.  She had just gotten up to come upstairs to sleep with me when she heard a woman’s voice say “Awww.  It’s ok.” She couldn’t make it up the stairs.  Instead, she spent the rest of the night wide awake with the covers tightly over her head.  We told her the truth the next day.  She was just glad she wasn’t hallucinating.

Things continued to disappear and return.  Things would move around the house.  We dealt with it.  We lived with it.

But wait…there’s more.

PART FOUR

Mrs. Greer continued to steal our stuff and move our stuff and basically let her presence be known for many years.  She was seen on one more memorable occasion, though.

It was a warm summer’s evening and my boyfriend and I had walked down to the corner store.  We’d left my house unlocked as we were only going to be gone for a short while.  We were about a block from the house on our return trip when we heard a dog putting up quite a fuss.  As we got closer, I was able to identify it as my dog.  It sounded like someone was pulling his leg off while sawing at his tailbone.  I’d never heard a sound like that come from any animal.  My heart started pounding.  I thought maybe there was an intruder since we’d left the house unlocked.

We got to within visual distance of my house and I could see my Cosby in the window by the stairs in the living room.  He was looking toward the middle of the room and visibly shaking while he continued to make that godawful noise.  My boyfriend and I followed his gaze to the bay window where we both saw a figure walk into view of the window, bend over to do something, then vanish.

I was shaking.  Having difficulty breathing.  “There’s someone in my house.”

“There sure the hell is,” was the only thing my boyfriend could manage to squeak out.

We formulated a game plan.  He’d go in the back door, I’d go in the front.  We’d catch whoever was in there.  We were too close to the house for him to have been able to escape.  Somehow, someone knew that my daughter had paid me back on a loan that day  and I’d foolishly left about $2000 cash in my purse to take to the bank the next day.  I also had left two tennis bracelets sitting on my dining room table.  What a fool I was for leaving the house unlocked!  What was I thinking?

So, I went in the front and he went in the back.  We met in the dining room.  No one was there.  We searched the house, high and low.  Every cupboard, closet, floor.  Nothing.  No one.  Cosby had settled down but was still shaking.  He followed me from nook to cranny as I searched my home.  My money was still in my purse.  My tennis bracelets still sat on the dining room table.

That’s when we knew.  It was Mrs. Greer, again.  Because, you see, there was a loveseat in that bay window where the intruder was seen.  No one could have been standing there.  They would have had to have walked right through that couch to be seen where we saw “him”.

I started thinking about how the house was set up on my first tour through, prior to purchase.  I remembered a TV set in the bay window.  The kind you would have had to walk up to and bend over to change the channel or turn it off.  That’s where the Greer’s had their TV.  Yuppers.  They sure did.  And maybe a Greer ghost needed to change the station from Ed Sullivan to Bonanza.

Things started to slow down with Mrs. Greer around that time.  A few signs of her presence were still found for a short time, then she just sort of left us.  At least I thought that’s what happened.

Until the day my daughter Kristin, now all grown up, called me.  She wanted to know if I thought ghosts moved. You see, she was living with a young man that none of us were quite crazy about.  And it seems that certain gifts he’s given to her little boy have vanished.  Things that would be too big to misplace.  It just reminded me so much of how Mrs. Greer would let her dislike of the men I was seeing be known in just such a manner.  I started thinking about how I’d also read that ghosts could be attached to a piece of furniture instead of a house.  People could actually bring a ghost into their home in this way.  I started thinking about that antique bedroom furniture that I’d used for so many years.  The set that I’d inherited from the kids’ great-grandmother when she went into a nursing home.  The great-grandmother who had died about the time Mrs. Greer had made her first appearance to us.  The furniture that I’d given to Kristin when she moved into her new home.  Maybe it was never Mrs. Greer, after all.  Maybe it was Great-Grandma.  We may never know, but now she’s Kristin’s to deal with.

You’d think my story would end here, wouldn’t you?  Not a chance.  Part 5, coming up.

PART FIVE

So, I finally met and married the man of my dreams.  I moved out of my house.  Mrs. Greer (or Great-Grandma) appeared to have moved in with my middle child, Kristin.  Kristin could handle it; Mrs. Greer had become something of a friend to all of us.  You’d think my story could end here, right?  Wrong.  Look at the title.  Living With Ghosts.  Plural.  How I ever got this lucky, I don’t know.  Just two more tales to tell and I’ll leave you all alone.

My wonderful new husband, Kevin, suffered the loss of his first wife several years prior to our marriage.  From all I’ve heard, she was a wonderful woman with whom I would have had a lot in common had we met on this planet.  We were even both behavioral health nurses, for crying out loud.

Kevin has this great old century home, right near the shores of Lake Erie.  He and his wife, Jane, raised their kids here.  Before I moved in, he told me how she always said that she would come back as an egret when she died.  Egrets are large, white birds that resemble a heron.  They enjoy hanging out here, near the lake.  He also told me how he would talk to Jane after she passed away to ask advice on things that were troubling him.  On several of these occasions, a white egret would swoop near him.  He always felt that was his answer from her.

So, back to when I moved in.  I was re-doing her old bedroom, making it ready to be “ours”.  The day I started, I felt very odd.  I feel a woman’s bedroom is pretty personal.  I was cleaning windows and painting trim.  I started talking to her.

“Jane, thank you for the beautiful home and the wonderful family that you had to leave behind.  I hope this is OK with you.  I’m sorry you had to leave all of this and all of them.”

I went on this way several different times.  I just wanted to make sure we had good mojo going on here.

Well, since I was painting in a new environment, I was quite disorganized.  I’d made about six or seven trips up and down the stairs to get rags, tools,  and what have you.  On the last trip up, I saw it.  Right at the top of the stairs.  Right where I couldn’t possibly have missed it on any of my other trips up and down.  A large, white, seagull feather.  I freaked out.  Shades of Mrs. Greer!  I couldn’t touch it, but I had to live here with it all day until Kevin got home.  All I could do for my sanity was throw a dropcloth over it.

When Kevin got home from work, I was shaken.  (You’d think that I’d have been used to this kind of stuff by now, wouldn’t you?  Nah.  You never get used to it.)  I told him how I’d been feeling while painting and how I’d talked to Jane.  I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up the stairs.  He lifted the dropcloth and there it was.  He said that he’d remembered looking in an old box several days before and seeing a seagull feather in it.  Upon further inspection, it was now gone.  Obviously it was the one laying at the top of the stairs for me.  How it got out of that box, we have no clue.

He was actually able to laugh about this one.  He said that would be just like something Jane would have done.  He felt it was a little welcoming gift to me and she was giving her approval.

And with what she did next, I’m sure she approves.  Stay tuned, one last time.

PART SIX

Well, I hope this is my final chapter in my experiences with ghosts.  I would have thought moving thirty-five miles away would have stopped whatever was going on.  Now, I know better.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not some kind of a conduit between the worlds.  Two ghosts in two different houses?  How special for me!

This last event took place just after completing my move.  My moving into Kevin’s house was cause for a lot of physical changes here to accommodate my belongings.  There were two old, built-in corner cabinets in the dining room.  One of them had to go to make way for my curio cabinet.  This cabinet is glass encased with mirrored backs.  It holds all of my most precious belongings:  my Swarovski crystal collection, my depression glass collection and dozens of little trinkets that have tremendous meaning to me.   Kevin dutifully performed the task of removing one old cabinet and we then brought my cabinet over.  With one small problem.  My cabinet was about thirteen or fourteen inches shorter than the one we took out, resulting in some hideous wall deformities showing above the newly placed curio cabinet.  Kevin came up with a plan to build a platform that would fit snugly under the cabinet, raising it to the height of the other one and covering the bad spots on the wall.

It was his birthday, but he spent the day in the shed, building and staining the new stand for my cabinet.  We emptied it out, put the stand under it and checked it for stability.  It was like a rock.  I then refilled it with all of my treasures.

We spent the rest of the day doing whatever, then got ready to go out for dinner to celebrate his birthday.  We had the door open and were just getting ready to step outside when we heard this tremendous crash.  It sounded like all manner of glass breaking, so we both made a beeline back to the dining room.  I was sure something happened to the curio cabinet and all of my precious belongings.  A crash that loud had to be bad.

What we found in the dining room took our breath away.  The cabinet was still upright.  Everything was in it’s rightful place, except for the one thing in there that I really didn’t care much for.  It was a glass dish on the bottom shelf, filled with colored glass beads.  It meant nothing to me.  It was just something to fill up an empty space.  Now, it was outside of the cabinet and on the floor.  Glass beads were scattered around, and the doors to the cabinet were closed tightly.  Now, mind you, these are the kind of doors that lock shut by pushing firmly on little metal plates in the upper corners that connect with magnets.  There was no way that these doors swung open with enough force to swing back hard enough to lock them.  Not without shattering to smithereens.

With very little conversation, we emptied the cabinet again.  He lifted it and I pulled the new stand out from under and we went out to dinner, as planned.  We spent most of the meal unable to speak much.  He said “That was Jane.” I agreed.  He felt the cabinet had shifted just enough throughout the course of the day to pose a danger of it falling over at some point.  I pointed out that it was his birthday and Jane was probably checking in on him and saw what was likely to happen.  We both felt she did this to save my stuff.  Kevin further believes she did this to pimp him out, as he said she loved to do when something he did went awry.  Either way, that dish could never have come through those doors, leaving them unscathed and relocked, without some kind of supernatural intervention.  Had that cabinet crashed forward…had all my treasures been smashed…that would have been an awful start to our new lives together.  We both feel she protected us from that.  She also got to pimp Kevin out one more time.

The next day, I came up with the brilliant idea to put the stand on top of the cabinet, thus insuring the stability of the bottom again.  It looks great and has served the purpose well for several years, now.

Since that time, we’ve been ghost free.  I certainly hope I don’t have to add another chapter to this tale someday.  Enough’s enough, don’t you think?

The End  (I hope)

He came to us from the streets.  He was able to spend some of his nights at a local mission shelter, but that was only twelve hour housing on a first come, first serve basis.  If he got there too late, he was doomed to spend the night outdoors; outdoors in the bitterly cold, northern Ohio winter.  He was emaciated and filthy.  His hair and beard hung in long, greasy tangles.  His nails were black.  Filth was encrusted into his skin.  The only reason he ended up with us was due to his illness finally getting the best of him.  He’s paranoid schizophrenic and started believing someone was poisoning his water.  To counteract this, he began pouring bleach into his water and coffee prior to drinking it.  Someone at the shelter noticed this and he finally made his way into the mental health system, for the first time, at age forty-seven.

He was initially very frightened of us, but accepted low doses of antipsychotic medications with very little encouragement.  After the first day, he was able to accept direction from us.  We were able to get him into the shower.  He spent his days just lying in the bed, in the warmth of a hospital room.  He doesn’t watch television or socialize with the other patients.  He just lies in bed; internally stimulated with whatever hallucinations are running through his mind at the moment.  He comes out for meals, then begins searching through the dining room’s garbage cans for leftovers he can take back to his room.  We gently redirect him to the refrigerator and cupboards that are stocked with whatever he may want.  He smiles hugely with a smile that has very few teeth left in it and takes a package of crackers back to his room.  This is quite a coup for someone used to eating moldy and rotting food out of dumpsters.

He has a harsh, moist cough.  He’s wheezing.  He’s coughing up green sputum.  We begin to suspect pneumonia.  He’s too paranoid to allow a chest x-ray or respiratory treatments.  He does accept antibiotics from a trusted nurse, however.  He complains of a large lump on the side of his neck that is causing him some pain.  After another day of antipsychotic meds, he is agreeable to allow a CT-scan of the neck and chest.  The results stop all of the nursing staff in their tracks.  We’re not used to seeing this kind of thing on a psych unit.

The doctor goes in to give him the news about what she suspects.  She tells him it looks like cancer; like the cancer is in his lymph glands, lungs and spine.  He smiles and thanks her for the information.  She says she wants to run a few more tests on him.  He smiles and agrees to whatever the doctor wants.  The doctor is shaken by his calm demeanor.

His nurse takes him some juices to help break up the congestion in his chest.  She asks if he understands what the doctor just told him.  He says he does.  Then he smiles again and says “It’s so nice to finally be loved.”

We all cried for this sad, lost soul.  We pray his death will be kinder than his life has been.

I was jolted awake to the plaintive strains of Incense and Peppermints.  I lay still for a moment before I reached over and turned the volume up in time to hear that I had little to win and nothing to lose.  I turned on my light and was greeted by Bobby Sherman sweating shirtless on my wall.  The Monkees shared space with him and the other teen idols of the day.  I walked over to my mirror and greeted the day’s new zits.  I bared my teeth at my reflection and braces snarled back at me.  Glancing over toward the window, I saw webs of frost on the inside of the pane which assured me of what I already knew:  today would be another sub-zero day.  The clouds outside sulked grayly in a low ceiling.  The dee-jay announced the imminent arrival of yet more snow.  I was fourteen years old, I didn’t want to go to school and my mood was now set for the day.

I was slowly working my way through my morning ablutions when my mother stuck her head in my room.  “Good morning.  Could you turn your radio down so it doesn’t wake up your sister?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes in the mortally wounded and exasperated manner that teenagers master so well.  “Okay!  Would you just quit nagging me and leave me alone so I can get ready?”  I had found my first target of the day.

“Don’t you snap at me!  Just do as I say and knock off the smart mouth!”

“Just leave me alone and I’ll do it!”  I yelled.

My mother left, knowing it would be fruitless to try to discipline me in the mood I was in, unless she was willing to risk a major explosion before her first cup of coffee.  I grudgingly nudged the volume control down a fraction of a hair and finished dressing.  I brushed my hair back over my shoulder and slicked on a layer of white lipstick.  From the next room, I heard my baby sister, Suzy, cry herself awake.  I guiltily turned my radio down before looking for my shoes and books under my bed.

Downstairs, my guilt over waking the baby turned to satisfaction as I witnessed my mother trying to soothe Suzy’s screams while simultaneously making oatmeal for me and warming a bottle for the baby.  I knew her juggling act was made even more difficult due to her lack of a wake-up cup of coffee.  It was her fault anyhow.  If she hadn’t nagged me about my radio, I never would have left it playing so loud and she wouldn’t have to be holding that screaming baby right now.  Everything was her fault.

She put a bowl of oatmeal on the table for me.  I glared at it.  “I’d rather have that leftover cake for breakfast.”

“You’re not going to school with a piece of cake in your stomach.  Eat your oatmeal.”

“I don’t like oatmeal anymore.  I’m sick of it,” I whined.

“I really don’t care.  Just eat it.”

“No, I won’t.  I’m not the baby in the family anymore.  You can’t just stick food in my mouth and make me eat it,” I snapped.  The look on my mother’s face was enough to tell me that she was about to prove my last statement wrong.  I knew enough to shut up and at least pick at the cereal.

Suzy continued her wailing until Mom finally poked the bottle into her mouth.  She was about to sit down with her coffee when the sound of a horn in the driveway signaled the arrival of the carpool.  Mom hurried to the door to wave to the driver so she would know she had been heard while I grabbed my books in one hand and my coat with the other.  I headed for the door.  “You stop right there and put that coat on, young lady,” my mother ordered.

“I don’t have time!  My ride’s here!” I spat.  I could feel the cold air from the open door working it’s way across the room.

“They’ll wait.  Put your coat on!”

“I would have been ready by now if you’d let me skip that stupid oatmeal,” I snapped as I threw down my books and pulled my coat up over my arms.  The driver honked impatiently.

“Zip that coat up,” my mother sighed.

“I don’t have time!” I screamed back.  Suzy jerked in her playpen and started crying again.

“Don’t push me, now, young lady!  Zip your coat and get out that door!”

I shot the zipper half way up, grabbed my books and headed out the door.  Half way down the icy steps leading down from our front porch, I grabbed the rail and angrily turned back toward my mother.  I knew the watchful eye of the carpool would keep me safe from any maternal backlash.  She would never yell at me in front of others.

“You know, you just feel you have to control me every step of the way, don’t you?  You don’t have any control over your own life, so you have to control everyone else’s”  I knew a smug expression was adorning my face as I carefully picked my way down the icy steps and over the mounds of snow toward the waiting car.  I grasped the cold door handle in my hand as I turned back for one last twist of the knife before making my grand exit.  I really knew how to impress my friends.

“I’ll never make all of the mistakes you did!  I’ll always have total control over my life!”  With that, I roughly yanked the car door open, lost my footing and slid entirely under the car, all in one smooth, effortless motion.

As I lay staring up at the salt and slush covered underside of the car, I became aware of the peals of hysterical laughter coming from the inside of the vehicle above me.  What was worse, I could even hear my mother guffawing from inside of the house.  I felt snow from the driveway in my underwear, and I realized with horror that this was a good indication that my skirt was up around my waist and my pantyhose were ripped.

I slowly backed myself out from under the car while trying to pull my skirt down before I had to stand up.  Everyone in the car was in hysterics.  I sneaked a look toward the house and saw my mother nearly doubled over with laughter.  She was holding her side with one hand and the door frame with the other, trying to keep herself upright as she received her reward for having to be my mother that morning.

I gathered my scattered schoolbooks and slid my wet behind into the backseat of the car.  When the driver had calmed herself enough to handle the car again, she backed out of the driveway to take my thoroughly humiliated and chastened self, along with my still giggling friends, to school.

This, my mother contends, is absolute proof of the existence of God.

We’ve been together ten years, and now it comes to this.

It started gradually.  When we first met, he was homeless and I took him in.  His bright, blue eyes captured my heart from the start.  He was, and still is, quite the charmer.  I was glad to feed and house him when he was so down and out.  I cleaned up after him and even paid his medical bills.  He returned these favors with what I thought was an unconditional love.  His seductive ways soon won me over and I was helpless when he was around.

The abuse started slowly, as it often does with males of his ilk.  It began when he started following me everywhere.  I could tell he didn’t trust me.  He even began following me into the bathroom.  I’ll never forget the time he attacked me through the shower curtain.  He thought it was nothing but a game and was quite amused by it all.  I felt violated.  I can’t tell you the last time I was able to use the bathroom alone.  He knows no boundaries.

Then, my jewelry started disappearing.  Earrings and bracelets were found in some of his favorite hiding places.  I’ve no doubt that he was going to fence them for some of his favorite dried, green leaves.  I buy this for him, but it’s not enough.  It’s just another way he thinks he can control me, I’m sure.

No one would suspect the abuse of which he’s capable.  He ingratiates himself to everyone with his attention to them and his shining personality.  I’m alone in the knowledge that he ignores me most of the time.  However, I’d better be there when he wants me.  I have no choice in the matter.

He really thinks he’s quite the swinger.  Like most males, just give him a comfortable spot and a football and he’s happy.  He thinks it’s some big trick that he can make the swing move for his own delight.  I see through his diabolical ways, though.  He continues to think that if I find him special and unique, I’ll let him stick around.

I’m not really sure when I discovered that he really liked men more.  I wish he had confided this to me when we first met, but now it’s too late to save my heart.  Any man who shows up here is bound to be subjected to his attempts to win them over.  He’s even made advances toward my son.

He’ll “accidentally” bump up against them and make sure his body gets as close to them as possible.  He makes quiet, seductive sounds to get their attention.  He knows no shame.  He does this in plain sight of myself or any of my female friends who visit.  Not that there’s anything wrong with this; I just wish he had been honest with me from the start about where his true interests lay.

The bulk of the abuse has been going on for quite some time.  I’ve just taken it with a grain of salt.  He’s constantly standing in the way of my progress; blocking me and trying to trip me up.  No matter what it is that I try to accomplish, he’s there to try and make me stumble.  Recently, I became fed up.  I retaliated.  I’ll admit that I struck the first blow.  I kicked out at him, although gently, when he attempted to get in my way for some minor household task.  That’s when it happened for the first time.  As I walked away, I felt the force of his raw strength attacking the backs of my legs.  I was dumbfounded.  This couldn’t be so!  Yet, it began happening with more frequency.  He’s even taken to hitting others who suggest his presence may be overkill at the moment.  I can only imagine this will continue to get worse.

I don’t know what to do.  I can’t leave him. This is my house.  I can’t kick him out.  I know he’ll keep coming back.  He has me in a type of choke hold.

Typical.

My eyes shot open and, at once, I knew the awful truth. It was still dark, but I was again awake. I laid there for a few moments before I rolled over to look at the clock, knowing it must be about 2:30. Yup. It was 2:38 am, my usual menopausal waking time. If I wake around that time, I’m doomed to lay awake for the next several hours. I began my usual routine.

I rolled to my other side and smoothed out the covers. I snuggled deeper into my pillow, determined not to let my mind start to race, but I was too late. Just that thought alone ensured that something would come to mind that I couldn’t possibly wait until morning to think about, like the litter box I forgot to empty the day before or my grocery list. Yeah! Let’s lay awake and think about what’s missing from the cupboards. Kind of a mental treasure hunt! That’s worth losing a few hours sleep over, isn’t it?

I’m now aware of my husband’s breathing. He uses a bi-pap machine due to apnea and snoring. While it has helped tremendously with these problems, he’s now the purveyor of some amazing, expiratory noises. He can go from cheek puffs to lip plops. Some nights, for my amusement and torture, he even creates words. Word Nights leave me terrified of the hidden meanings. My imagination has him possessed or even worse, running for public office. Whatever sound he unconsciously chooses, it’s repetitious until he changes position. I reach over to my nightstand and grab an earplug, to block the night’s “plurp plurp plurp plurp” ’s. I can only use one at a time, because two make my head feel like it’s in a vacuum and about to explode. I then turn my own head so that my exposed ear is in the pillow. Anytime I roll over, I have to move the earplug to the other ear. If he rolls onto his side, the expiratory noises end and I take the earplug out, else I wake up to a vacuum sealed ear canal. This routine continues all night.

After about an hour of this nonsense, I decide that emptying my bladder might help me get back to sleep. A trip to the bathroom ensues and then it’s back under the covers. Determined to get at least a few more hours of sleep, I repeat my mantra in my mind. I drift off into a thin and fitful sleep that’s dotted with nightmares. I snort myself awake with my own fat induced snoring episodes. A position change allows me to doze for a few more minutes of uneasy dreams until a hot flash becomes my next alarm clock. I’m grateful, because my sleep wasn’t restful and the nightmares were disturbing. I kick off the covers and grab a tissue off of the nightstand to blot the sweat from my face. I look at the clock and see that it’s 4:11. I’m now going between hot flashes and cold flashes. The covers are off, then on, then off, then on. Take out the earplug and put it in the other ear as I roll over to find the cool spot on the bed, then look for the blankets when the chills overtake me. I notice my husband is on his side and take the earplug out and put it in the little earplug dish on my nightstand. It’s now time to kick the covers off and blot my face again.

My body temperature settles down and I’m able to pull the covers up and settle down a bit. It’s at this point that it happens. The Dreaded Nose Whistle. Every time I breathe in, I hear the high-pitched squeal of my own dry, nasal passages. Whistle in, breathe out. Whistle in, breathe out. After attempting to relieve myself of this new malady for a few minutes with some hefty inhalations, I get up and go back into the bathroom and give it a few mighty honks, even though it’s so dry there’s nothing to release.

Back in bed, I’m relieved to find out the Nose Whistle is gone. The hot and cold flashes are over. I can deal with the earplug utilization, as that’s something that just has to be done. I finally drop off to sleep again, around 5:30.

At 5:49, my phone rings. “Hello, Ina? This is June at work. Would you like to come in and work extra today?”

And once again, I’m awake.