“Grandma, do you believe in ghosts?”
“Of course I do, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Mom says that ghosts don’t exist, that’s it’s just in stories.”
“Your mother and I don’t agree on everything.” Grandma chuckled. “She has her opinion and I have mine. I believe in ghosts.”
“Did you ever see one?”
“Maybe, I’m not sure.”
“What? How come you’re not sure?”
“How would I know if some of the people I’d seen walking on the street or saw in a store were ghosts or regular people?”
Grandma’s logic was eccentric, but unassailable. She could turn around anything the rest of us said and make us feel foolish or petty for questioning her. I was too young to feel it as a sting. I just thought she was the smartest woman who had ever lived.
“Did you ever talk to someone you thought might be a ghost?”
“Yes, Darla, I did. Right after your grandfather passed on I woke up and saw him sitting on the end of the bed. It might have been a dream, but I think it was his ghost. I told him that I missed him and he told me that I’d be fine. And he was right. I was fine. That was long before you were born. I thought I couldn’t go on without him, but I did. So he was right.”
“Was it a dream or his ghost?”
“I don’t think it matters one way or the other. Maybe ghosts come to us in dreams? Either way, I believe in ghosts”
“But why, Grandma, why believe if…”
“Darla, I must believe in ghosts so I can come back and visit you. How could I haunt you if I didn’t believe I could? You can’t do something that you don’t believe you can do. Do you understand that? It’s important. Whatever you want to do, whatever you do when you grow up, you have to believe that you can do it or you don’t even have a chance.”
Twenty-two years later Grandma died. A few days passed and there she was sitting at the end of my bed, telling me that I would be fine. That everything would be fine.
Now I believe in ghosts.
