I’m not sure when I first felt like a ghost after Riley died. Was it when I caught a glimpse of my translucent skin, the unfamiliar reflection in a store window? The woman staring back startled me, disconnected as an image on a screen. When I waved at her to see if she waved back, her hand moved with mine like a marionette.
It could have been when I transported from the produce aisle to the dining room of my father’s one-bedroom apartment after the divorce when I was five, the ominous bowl of lima beans he insisted I eat before leaving the table. Why am I back here? I thought, looking around at the bare walls of the dimly lit kitchen, the shag carpet sprouting between my toes like the grass at my favorite park.
Or maybe it was when I bumped my head in the rocket ship play structure at the park shortly after Riley’s death, ascending the spiral staircase behind my speeding toddler, Desmond, forgetting to duck at one of the turns. The impact of the metal against my forehead shocking, not because of pain, but because I felt my body for the first time since my other son’s death. The collision broke through the cocoon numbness. Where have I been? I wondered. I confess, I wanted it to happen again…that feeling of being alive. I almost got struck by a car days after and was exhilarated by the rush of adrenaline, reveling, I could have died. For the first time, I understood the appeal of cutting.
It had been unlike my father to force me to eat something I didn’t like, so the lima bean standoff confuses me. I wish he was alive so I could ask him about it. He died from ALS before I married. My father was all about enjoyment, not health. He was the fun dad who bought me candy and ice cream and let me stay up late playing video games. He teased me for bringing him low-fat yogurt when he was bedridden. “I’m fucking dying and you’re giving me this shit.” He laughed.
He had a protruding belly grown over the years like a slow alien gestation, evidence of his midnight ice cream binges and toast smothered in peanut butter and jelly for breakfast. When I was in high school during the ’80s recession, he told me that he was going to file bankruptcy because of the real estate market crash, while simultaneously buying expensive Christmas gifts. “If we’re going bankrupt, we’re going out in style,” he said.
Drinking champagne and getting pedicures after Riley died, I vowed, If I’m going to grieve, I’m going to grieve in style. I think now, ten years after Riley’s death, Forget wearing black. I’m going to wear white! Forget looking like shit. I’m not going to cry. I’m going to wear makeup! Black mascara. Not waterproof. That will stop me from crying! Grief doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. It was the advice of a therapist who told me to do the things that made me happy even if they didn’t anymore. The idea was that these things would bring me up out of depression into a neutral state. I took her idea and ran with it, not looking back. It resonated with me because my dad had showed me how to still live amongst ruin.
I didn’t know I was putting lipstick on a ghost.
Maybe it first happened after the dream I had about the wizard in the cave. He was the same one we visited in our nightly guided meditations with Riley after his first AVM bleed when he was five, fourteen months before he died. We told people the breathing exercises were to help deal with Riley’s anxiety and ours, but in reality we did them religiously, hoping for a miracle, in case self-healing was a possibility. I still hear my son’s sweet voice. “You never know, Mommy.”
“Now, I do know,” I hear my ghost-self say.
In the dream, Riley is waiting for me in the cave. The wizard says, “Ah, you’re here,” and taps the crown of my head with his wand. A bright light erupts, and I watch myself walk toward Riley and reach for his hand. He smiles and gazes at me, his rose-pink cheeks lit with some kind of heavenly light. But why am I still here? I wonder. What is left of me to absorb such light, rather than sieve it?
During the pandemic, when I meditated, one of the guided meditations instructed me to call my name three times and come back to myself. “Chanel, Chanel, Chanel,” I said, feeling like an idiot, but saying it to myself, nonetheless. I liked the idea of my energy being out there swirling around the universe with Riley’s. I liked to imagine we were living a life together as energetic forces, as opposed to a ghostly mother searching halls and streets for her son. I envisioned saying, “See you soon!” and releasing his hand, before floating back to myself.
Riley loved going on walks with me. I remember how his energy felt next to me. It was bouncy and unwieldly. One time, I closed my eyes and thought, I would know him even if I couldn’t see him. I can’t remember if this was before or after his first bleed, but the memory has stayed with me like a touchstone for the lost corporeal.
We walk around with ghosts of ourselves and our loved ones, dead or alive. Ghosts of our younger selves. Ghosts of our younger children, our younger husbands and wives. Relationship ghosts. Ghosts of lipsticks and hairstyles past. Ghosts of memories and forgotten dreams.
When Desmond stands beside me at the doctor’s office and he is almost my height, I remember seeing moms with their older sons when my boys were little, trying to imagine what it would feel like to have a child so tall and capable. Desmond’s presence is large, and I envision all the younger versions of him beside me like Matryoshka nesting dolls: the infant who slept in a wrap over my chest as I kissed his smooth head, the toddler who ran away without looking back, into the street, through the crowded airport, down the endless beach, the five-year-old who would finally hold my hand and snuggle close and beg for more toys, and now the preteen boy ghosting me.
I soothed myself after Riley’s death; my six-year-old boy would have ceased to exist even if he hadn’t died from a brain hemorrhage. I would have mourned all those younger versions of him as he grew and developed into a teenager and an adult. For some reason I found comfort in this. I still would have lost the sweet boy who called me “My Mommy,” gifted me roses from our garden in a plastic cup, and one evening before his bedtime, tucking a blanket around me, “For you, my fine lady.”
When I think of my younger self looking at the window reflection that day, I mourn her. I mourn the safe cocoon that encircled her body. I even mourn her fresh grief. Somehow, it made everything more stunning, like sun shining on broken glass, turning ruin beautiful.
Chanel Brenner is the winner of the 2021 Press 53 Award for Poetry for “Smile, or Else.” She is the author of Vanilla Milk: a memoir told in poems (Silver Birch Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the 2016 Independent Book Awards and honorable mention in the 2014 Eric Hoffer awards. Her poem “July 28th” won first prize in The Write Place At the Write Time’s contest, judged by Ellen Bass, and her poem “Apology” won first place in the Smartish Pace Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. In 2018, she was nominated for a Best of the Net.