Give up the Ghost

(Note in advance: this one isn't a happy fun post.* I promise to follow up with one of those soon. Just FYI.)

It's almost 11 pm in our tiny kitchen. I just baked a batch of cookies using wax paper. Apparently you're not supposed to put wax paper in the oven. I feel like this is something I've been told before, but so it goes.

Today is a special day, in an odd way. It's been two years now since my grandma decided she was ready. Ready to leave and go see her husband, son, and friends.

Standing in the kitchen, ripping off parchment paper, I think about a plaque that used to hang on her wall, that my uncle Vern had written about her. It talked about her kitchen, the tiny one that she had managed to feed a small army out of. Her kitchen had been filled with love and shared whispers. Secrets and sometimes tears, between her and her children. Whether by birth or by proximity, they were hers to care for.

Nearing midnight, mine is just filled with the scent of waxy cookies. And shared only with a ghost.

In a lot of ways, that ghost follows me around all the time. She appears in my mannerisms, in my weird choice (and semi hoarding) of knick-knacks, in my every day conversations. Only an hour ago, as I chided the beau out of the kitchen, I heard myself saying how there should only be two people in the kitchen, one for cooking and one for cleaning, and anybody else should get out.

That's a paraphrase of my grandma, I just know it.

Or at least, I think I know it. Two years gone and I feel like I've begun to curate a version of her in my mind that hits all the marks I need it to, while smoothing out anything else. I don't think about the later, cranky years as much. Except for the occasional smirk about her very best scowling faces. Or mockery of the pitiful voice she saved just for voicemails to guilt you into calling her back (even though you'd just spoken to her a day ago) - you know, the one that is half whiny, half 'help I've fallen and I can't get up,' and all the best mastery of manipulation. The voicemails that I wish I'd saved at some point. Instead of just rolling my eyes and making a note to call her back... tomorrow. Because there was always a tomorrow.

Until there wasn't.

The timer goes off, and batch two is through. I drop molten chocolate on my shirt, after burning my thumb. As I try and fail to fully remove the stain, I accept that this shirt will always be a bit chocolaty. But hey, if anyone is looking that close, you just smack em!

And there she is again. Putting words in my mouth.

All the memories I use to craft this ghost grandma, this cherished curation, they blur together to create something I can keep not on a pedestal, but can instead use as a shield against anything sad or bad in this world. She exists only in our minds, in our stories, and in the imitations of her walking about still. She may not be as vivid, but all the moments leading up to her departure are just so clear in my mind...

-

I typed up everything for you, dear friends. Every memory. Every moment from that week before. Every regret. Every thought and feeling from the day of and the days that followed. I put it here in black and white, while the ghost shoulder-read. The timer went off, and the oven ran on, and the cookies saw a darker shade of pale.

Then I wondered why I'd kept all those thoughts inside so long. If that had been that dull, aching feeling in the pit of my stomach all these years. Maybe I just needed to tell the story so I could move on. You know, hang out with the ghost only on special occasions and not just anytime I allowed a free thought to wander.

Or maybe I need that little bit of sadness, to better appreciate the present and the ones I love.

Maybe I'm not ready to give up the ghost.**

So I took that black and white, and I wrapped it back up. In a little box. With a bow. And I tucked it away again. In the back, bottom corner of the little metaphorical chest where I hide all my other treasured thoughts.

I'm sorry I couldn't share it with you today. There may come a point where I'm ready. Or there may not. Either way, I sure do miss her. But, at least - and I'm sure she'd agree - all things are better with cookies...



*If you know me, I'm not very "good" at grieving. I don't express it well in person. That's why I burrow into a blog post and hide there instead. It's easier to walk around with a smile on, then to try and explain what's wrong. Because no one accepts the answer "I'm just sad today, is all." (Or I just act bitchy and cranky so people leave me alone, but that more often backfires...)
**In this sense or in the typical sense of the phrase either! Yet another phrase I never understood the meaning of....