It is a curious sensation, to die, and yet not move completely from the plane in which you have lived your life. Part of my soul moved on the moment I died. The other part though, stayed. I suppose all of the nonsense that they feed you over the years about ghosts being people who have died with unfinished business has some truth in it.

What you don’t hear is the agony it is to have part of your soul missing, waiting for something you aren’t sure is going to happen to come to pass. I can understand how the pain would drive you to forget your reason for staying on this plane, and to become a vengeful spirit, either trying to bring your business to a close by interfering, or to lash out at people who have nothing to do with you at all.

I had died in a car crash. The roads had been slick, I had been going a tad fast, and then, in the blink of an eye, my car had become a metal pretzel around a tree. I cannot describe to you how painful it was to watch them extract the remains of my corpse from my vehicle, or how painful it was to watch my mother struggling with her grief at my closed-casket funeral. How sad, to outlive your daughter. She hadn’t been expecting to lose me at sixteen, and it hit her hard.

I was really the only thing she had in the world, as tragic as that sounds. My father was verbally abusive to her. When I asked her why she didn’t leave him, she always said that it was out of hope that he’d change. I knew better though. She was terrified of what might happen to me if she might lose the custody battle that would ensue. It broke my heart to see my beautiful mother brought down by the man who calls himself her husband everyday, and knowing that she wouldn’t leave him because of me was intolerable.

I was lucky in knowing why I was stuck on Earth. Many ghosts simply have to wait here, festering in their pain until all those who were involved in their business are dead, or it is resolved without them knowing what it is. By this time, they can become angry and bitter about what death has dished out to them. The dreadful thing is, this hatred only prolongs their time in this twilight between death and the next phase of existence, whatever that may be.

As I knew it would, things at my house only got worse after my death. My father, made even more monstrous by his grief at my passing, was worse and worse to my mother every day. How I wish I could have been there for my mother, who was trying to bear both her extensive grief at losing her only, precious child, and the growing abusive from her husband, was a strong woman, but even strong women break under these conditions.

A year passed, and the situation only deteriorated. It was when he sank down to the level of hitting her for the first time that I saw the defiant gleam in her eye that told me that she had had enough.

The next morning, while her husband was at work, my mother paid a visit to a divorce attorney. The female attorney took one look at the black eye that was forming, and the bruises forming on her arm in the shape of a hand, and said that she’d help get every penny my father had. After taking pictures of my mother’s injuries, and taking a statement about what had happened during her seventeen year marriage, she left my mother alone with some paperwork for a moment. I formed as much of a body as I could, out of my ectoplasm, so I could be here for my last moments on Earth, with my mother.

A breeze from nowhere ruffled my mother’s hair, and she looked directly at where I was. She couldn’t see me, but I had made my presence known.

“Maria.” She whispered my name like a prayer.

“I love you Mom.” I said, as I started to fade away. My mother would be okay, and I will always love her.

Her smile brightened, and for a second, I could swear she heard me.

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