The Ghost of Christmas Past
Ghost 1: Last Wednesday was a normal day just like any other. I had to work in the morning and had plans to put up my Christmas tree at night with my roommate. Hey, don't judge. Yes it was a little early but I will be helping my mom put up their decorations on Thanksgiving and I didn't want to be all "decorated out" when it came time to put MY tree up...so I did it the only night I had free until Thanksgiving. Seriously...I'm a busy girl!
So ghost number one visited as I was deep in the thick of putting up my tree. I had my holiday Pandora radio station playing some Bing Crosby. I had my eggnog that I purchased at WalMart about an hour before. I was splaying the branches to the tree when I got a text message. Nowadays I get REAL excited for texts because, ever since leaving the west side, I don't get them. No one texts me down here. We all just call or actually see each other in person. Or Facebook message. No texting though.
I jumped up and tripped over the lower tree branches and then hurdled the boxes. It was a text from my sister saying "Have you seen who posted on my facebook page recently?" I sat and thought about it a second. Hmmm...since I didn't see it in the newsfeed then I'm probably not friends with whoever it was. Who is my sister friends with, that I'm not friends with, but that I know, and who she would find it worthy to text me in the middle of Wednesday to let me know about it? Hmm indeed! The ex. Had to be.
(Side note: My sister lived up at Point with me for about a year so she inevitably met the man who occupied my life. I remember one time I had to work late so he took her out to dinner for me to keep her company. He was always so nice to my sister. One of the last times I actually ever talked to him I was crying on the phone to him that my sister was pregnant...my niece turns 4 next month...)
He and my sister are Facebook friends. I'll admit when I first joined Facebook I used to look and see if he joined yet, but he never showed up on my searches. Then one day a friend of mine had a wall post from him so, per usual, my newsfeed shared too much information and I found out he finally joined. So many things learned over Facebook newsfeed. My sister added him shortly after that so they've been Facebook friends awhile. Seeing as how he totally hated me when we parted last, I will NEVER try to friend him. I guess I can shamelessly admit that I sent him a message really early on. Something along the lines of "I saw you were on Facebook and engaged and wanted to say congratulations...sorry things ended up the way they did...I hope some day we can be friends...blah, blah, blah." I got no response.
So anyway...he's friends with my sister and never has posted anything on her wall...then all of a sudden there is this little "hey your daughter is so big, you look like things are going well for you, just wanted to say hey" type of message. "Just want to say hey??" Seriously? Just wanted to see how she was doing? After how long? But whatever...who am I to judge? Maybe he's got some sort of holiday warm and fuzzies and decided he needed to share them with my sister.
After swearing out loud I called her back and confessed my need to comment on it. He'd get a notice seeing that I commented on his wall post and probably die. It was really hard to keep "the old me" under wraps. The crazy me who in the past might have gone on to his wall post and commented "her sister who adored you for 5 years and wasted her life waiting for you is also doing fine, thanks for asking"...but like I said...that's the old me :-) So I didn't do anything, but I was sure hit with a rush of emotion all at once.
Ghost 2: I haven't spoken on the phone with my father in probably a year. After my big brother died, we were really close. Arnold was always the go-between for us when we were growing up. He would always call my dad and end up updating him for me as well. I didn't feel the need to speak to my dad if my brother had. He never really had played much of a role in my adolescent life so it wasn't important to me to keep in touch. But then my brother died and our only link was lost forever. We talked a lot after that. Almost once a month for the first year.
When he flew up for the funeral 3 years ago he ended up staying for a week. I had solid father/daughter time with him for the first time in my life and it was because my brother had died unexpectedly. The worst thing to ever happen to me in my life is the best thing that ever happened to my relationship with my father. It brought us closer than we had ever been...ever. I was 24 years old and finally felt the love for my father that all other little girls were able to form when they were children.
I ended up taking two of my friends with me to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico one year because my dad lent me his timeshare. He and his family weren't going to go that year so that my friends and I could go. We talked a lot on the phone then because we were making preparations for the trip. And then I went on the trip. And then the trip was long over. And then I was just living life. Nothing new. Nothing to talk about. So I found myself not calling my dad anymore.
I missed a lot of his calls because I was just too busy to answer. He had the uncanny ability to catch me when I was in a bar...not only because of the two hour time difference...but because I'm usually in a bar these days. He had sent me some emails and I had sent some back...but it was like 3 total in an entire year.
Wednesday morning I got a very stern text from my mother ordering me to call my father because he was worried I was mad at him. First he called my mom just to make sure I was okay...and THEN he figured Iwas just mad at him because I was not returning his calls or emails.
What you need to understand is that phone calls to my dad take 10 minutes, tops, so it's not like they are wholly terrible thing to engage in. But I don't call him back for the same reason I don't call friends back who I haven't talked to in months...because I have nothing to say. Nothing new in my life. Still haven't met that special man...or if I have, I don't know it yet...or he doesn't know it yet... Not doing anything important with my life. Just going day by day. That's all I do. I am not in school, I don't have a man or anything that comes after getting a man. I am just living.
So I hate talking to people and having nothing to tell them when they call. My dad said it was just nice to hear my voice now and then. I understand that. It was a real dick move on my part not calling him. Sometimes he says things the same way Arnold use to say them. Funny as it is, my dad is my only link to Arnold just as I am his only link to him. Arnold brought us closer together and I need to remember to not live in the ghost of Christmas past here and actually keep my dad in my present because you never know what may happen in life.
Ghost 3: I am not easily scared. I absolutely love scary movies and ghost stories and it takes a real good one to actually succeed in scaring me. I like the feeling of being scared for some reason. It's a crazy adrenaline rush and it's exciting. Excited and scared are two very close emotional responses. My thoughts on ghosts and their existence is basically that 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong. If so many people in the world have so many stories (and actually believe these stories) that it's just ignorant to sit back and not believe something is out there. I think something is most definitely out there...perhaps why I love the X-Files...
But I digress...
In case you don't know me, or in case you met me just recently, my brother died. He had just turned 26 when he died in a car crash on New Year's Eve night in 2006. I was 24 years old. My brother was only 18 months older than me. He is a product of my mother and father...as I am, of course. And that's it. It was just us two before he and my ma split up so all of my other siblings are technically only half. It doesn't mean I love them any less...but there's just something different about the sibling you share with both parents in a family like mine. Plus we were so close in age and had 5 years together before my little sister came around.
We were very close our entire life. He was my little partner in crime. I looked up to him when I was a kid and he looked out for me. Being just one grade apart in school meant we shared a lot of life experiences together. My other siblings are so different in age that we don't have a lot of common ground in that respect. So you get it...we were close. Nothing alike personality-wise. I believe he had more work ethic in his little toe (the 12th toe to be exact) than I will ever be able to possess in a lifetime! He had street smarts...I had book smarts. And our lives took different paths as we got older, but you always share that little something you once had as a child. You always look up to your big brother...even if you don't ask his advice anymore or need his help doing things.
When he died my life was shattered apart. All our lives were. I told him, after he died, that he needed to come visit me. I needed to know he was okay...wherever he was. I needed to know there is something that exists after this world. Having lost my religion somewhere on the car ride from California to the midwest, I never fully committed to a thought on life after death. And then my brother died and I needed to know it wasn't the end for him. I needed him, I need him still, in my life. Even though he is dead...I need to know that I can reach him. I told him to visit me in my dreams if that was the only way possible. I've seen him. I have felt him in the air. I have never had physical evidence of his continued presence in my life...until Wednesday night.
Having already been "visited" by two "ghosts" that night...I tossed and turned a bit before falling asleep. My sleep wasn't as deep as I would have liked. I didn't really dream too much that I remember. The only reason I even remember that night is because at around 3 in the morning I heard a loud crash. Having been pretty well into my REM cycle...a loud crash out of nowhere was enough to cause me to sit straight up in bed, alert and ready for action. Had I had a gun, I might've grabbed it.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark but I couldn't see anything big that had fallen. Since the shelves were still secure on the wall, I fell back asleep. In the morning I saw that my little mirror that sits on my vanity top was on the ground. That must have been what I heard. But it was secure on my vanity. It had been in the same spot since I moved my room around weeks ago. Never once had it fallen off.
Then I looked over at my wall and some pictures had fallen out of my wall hanging. I have one of those padded boards with crisscrossed ribbons that you can slide pictures in to. There were three or four on the ground, but one had landed on my laptop and was staring straight up at me. It was my brother. It was the picture of him on his motorcycle. I felt a chill run down my back as I realized what had just happened there. I was actually visited by the 3rd ghost of Christmas past. My friend told me that he had seen me put up the Christmas tree and talk to my dad and he was just stopping in to say hi. Creepy. Seriously, creepy. But exciting at the same time!
There really isn't any reason for those pictures to have fallen out of the bulletin board. I have a ceiling fan on at night, but it's not strong enough to blow a mirror off my vanity or to pull pictures off my wall. They have all been blown by my fan since the day I hung that thing...so...at least 3 or 4 months. The first time any of them ever fall out and one is my brother's pic. Not only his pic, but it's the only one that landed on my shelf face up while the others hit the floor face down. There you have it.
It wasn't until Thursday that I put all three of those things together and realized that I had been visited by three ghosts that day. Arguably the three most influential men of my life...thus far anyway. My step-dad of course is an influence, but he's a positive one. In three separate ways I have hated all three of those men. My dad for not being there when I needed him as a kid, my ex for not being the man I needed him to be when I was in college, and my brother for leaving me and forcing me to realize how much I needed him.
And there you have it...Alicia's Christmas Carol. Except... Scrooge learned something after he was visited. I don't really know that there's something here for me to learn. If there is...I haven't the faintest idea what it might be. I guess I'll just have to chalk it all up to coincidence. It really got me thinking about a lot of stuff these past few days. I won't sit here any longer and make you read what it was because this is already damn long. I just needed to share and I'm glad I finally got to sit down and type this up. So until next time...
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