Shadows

I first noticed them about three months after my wife died ... if it really was a them.

They were shadows at the edges of my vision, grey wisps that swirled away like motes of dust in a shaft of sunlight. It was easy to dismiss them as some defect in my vision. Floaters? Dry eyes? At 73, I've had both. Eye drops haven't helped...with the floaters or the visitors. They arrive more frequently now than in the beginning. Lately, they have become — if they are a they—bolder or at least it seems so. But illusions cannot grow bolder ... can they?

The first stood next to me one night at the sink as I prepared vegetables for dinner, dropping the peelings in a compost bucket and then filling the steamer with manicured green beans and carrots. As I was pricking the skin of a Russet with a fork so it wouldn't explode in the oven, I missed and stuck my thumb. I yelped and winced and then I noticed something disappearing next to me.

It was a woman dressed in a tightly buttoned but loose fitting chambray work shirt with her arms folded across her ample chest. Her face remained beyond my peripheral vision. She was a headless form, just glimpsed, but somehow seeming gentle, and caring; grandmotherly and somehow pleased with the mise en place ... but she was unwilling to be seen.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. She was gone. Or was she never there at all? She seemed so real, so near I could have reached out and tucked her under my right arm and hugged her tightly as I did so often with Nellie. But that was then.

Now there was no one — real or imagined — and I would be eating this meal alone. Again. Standing at the kitchen counter. It would be filling but I would still feel empty. Why do I even bother? Cooking for one is no joy.

I miss that first visitor. She made me feel worthwhile the same way Nellie did when I made Shrimp Scampi or tried something new like Norwegian pancakes. But tonight, like most nights, I will be an unappreciative diner with too many dishes left to do.

"Oh, poor you!" I could almost hear Nellie, her voice growing louder and sharpening in tone. "What have you ever had to deal with?" She did not wait for an answer.

"Let's see, an only child, both parents at home, never had to worry about anything, full scholarship, didn't even have to work to get through college..."

She caught her breath and without missing a beat: "And how did that work out for you? Flunked out after two years?"

The silence was sudden and thick. Then she looked away and said softly, "I'm sorry ...that went too far."

It picked an old scab, maybe made it bleed again. But I held my tongue.

The apology did not end the argument, but it led to a cease fire. We had had this argument before. And more than once.The next volley would have been litany of her health problems — accidents and illnesses — since childhood. No, it was true, she knew more suffering than I, who but for measles had never even been sick. Arguing would be pointless.

Now she is gone and I have tried to figure out where she ends and I begin after all these years together. How much of me remains after being we? I remember him, but now he is on the other side of a lifetime that is like a roaring river. He remains in me but he is no longer me, only one of the forces that shaped me.

If I can no longer be him or the we that she shaped, then who am I to become?

Just then the cat leapt off the sofa and scrambled for the door. I turned to see what caused the sudden fuss, but there was nothing. The door was closed, no cat waited to go out.The dust that covered the floor was undisturbed.

That's been happening a lot, too. The visitors were not just shades of people half-seen entering a room or leaving a hallway, always lingering just out of sight in dim light. No, there were animals, too. Long gone pets can sometimes be seen crawling under the bed frame, darting through an open door, and sometimes growling or yowling, never loud and never long, but often enough to startle.

Oh, once your mind goes down this path, it is so easy to be fooled by a reflection of a TV in a window, grinding noises from the dishwasher, ice cubes clanking in the freezer. Or by the little noises they put in TV shows and ads these days to set the mood. A cat food commercial is bound to have a meow or two in the background.

And a house suddenly empty reveals in it silences the noises of wood expanding, foundations settling, switches flipping and water dripping that had gone unheard above the hum of life in a modern household.

Tricks of light and sound. That is all they are.

Aren't they?

"No!"

It was Nell's voice echoing again inside my mind.

"They are your friends, your family — people whose lives you have touched — come to ease your way when the time arrives," she would explain. "They are always here but you just don't see them."

Nell — most of her friends called her Nellie — often talked to her mother, who named her Ellen but the nickname stuck. I would sometimes hear her as she washed the dishes or swept the floor talking to Lydia, who died on the eve of her 80th birthday several years ago.

"Momma! Momma!" She would call out. Then some quiet murmuring that I could not make out.

Who was I to argue? Two years ago she suffered Broken Heart Syndrome— doctors call it takotsubo — and it left her in a coma for 11 days with a one in ten chance of survival. She should have bought a lottery ticket that day. She beat the odds, but not before a revelation.

"I saw the tunnel," she told me later. "It was just like everyone says. I could see everyone gathered to wait for me, but they told me I had to go back. It was not yet my time, that I had to go back to take care of you."

I don't know if that was real — or just real for her — but it was sweet and moving. She gave up the chance to rejoin everyone she loved and returned to a life that had been cruel and difficult, that taught her to suffer. That was the greatest act of love anyone has ever shown me. Even if it was the product of her imagination. And I was sure that is just what it was.

Nell was raised Catholic but her belief system blended Eastern thought and was colored by astrology and stories of the supernatural, Ouija boards and reincarnation. Somehow it worked for her. Guardian angels, spirit guides, planetary influences were all real to her.

For me, human beings are just another animal. Each, in its own way, has evolved to survive. Some became large and strong, some grew faster and deadlier, some conquered the wind on wings and others ruled the waves with fins and gills to create air from water. Humans became clever, but remain just another mammal. No claws, no speed, no strength and a life that ends in snap of the fingers just like every other creature.

We argued that point often, probing and challenging each other's beliefs, fostering some understanding but winning no points. Our only agreement was that neither of us could know for certain and that only upon death would we know. Well, I told her, if I was right she would never know, but if she was right I would be surprised and I would immediately seek her out to tell her that I was wrong.

But now she does know and I do not.

She always said that if she died first, she would find a way to let me know. So did Houdini, but so far I have not heard from her or him. At least, I have not yet recognized her among the visitors that over the years have come in greater numbers and more often.

Sometimes they gather just beyond the range of my vision. Grey and ethereal, they seem patient and determined. But are they really just like the foolish fears about boogeymen and monsters conjured by a mind searching for comfort and meaning?

I thought so ... until things began to disappear. The first and most startling was the cane.

I have busied myself since retirement by making walking sticks, shillelaghs and canes. It is an undemanding hobby that takes years — what a choice for a hobby started in old age. You can hunt for prime materials — usually a hardwood sapling about an inch in diameter — or grow your own which takes years more.

Once harvested, the sticks need to cure for at least two years with the ends sealed with wax so they do not split or crack. If they warp, they will need to be steamed, straightened, bent to shape and dried. The bark and branches must be removed before the shaft is sanded smooth and the character of the wood is revealed and enhanced with a protective coat of tung oil.

I had just begun working on the best of my recently cured sticks. The branches were larger than normal and when clipped left stubs that could be sharpened and retained for a shillelagh that could pound or rip an opponent. I had opted for a cane and removed all but three stubs in a ring near the bottom.

As I worked the stick, I carried it always, testing its support, twirling it with my fingers like a baton in parade, and trying to feel what it should be. I began to think it could be my best yet.

One night, I sat in bed, spinning it, rubbing it and considering those three stubs.

In the morning, it was gone. Vanished with no trace. Not in the bedroom. Not in the workshop. Not even anywhere in the yard where I might have laid it down to pull a weed or dump a bucket of vegetable trimmings in the compost heap. How could it be? No one has been here. Mislaid? Perhaps, but not gone. Yet it was nowhere to be found.

Then I began to worry less about the cane and more about me. Was my memory slipping? Did I just forget what I did with the cane? That is what Parkinson's did to my dad. I still have memories of him standing in the middle of a puddle in the parking lot of Golden Corral with his laces untied and looking bewildered as he waited for me.

At least, he still remembered me. I had visited his mother shortly before she died, and she did not know me though she had lived with us for the first eight years of my life. She thought I was my father.

I don't know which made me sadder.

But now I was scared. What was happening to me? Sometimes, I no longer knew which day it was. My mind was like a sieve, with life flowing through it collecting only a few scraps. Some days I can't even remember why I went into a room or why I logged on to the computer. What was it? It seemed so important a minute ago. Now it is gone.

Maybe I should ask the visitors who have gathered around my bed tonight. Still they lurk in shadow, barely visible in the gloom. There are more here tonight than usual and it is somehow comforting and not threatening to have them surrounding my bed in the middle of the night. When I was a child I would have pulled my head under the covers and hoped they would not see me ... that they would leave before I looked again. If I peeked and saw the shadow of my coat hanging from the hook on the bedroom door, I would have been sure they were still there waiting for me.

But not tonight. Tonight I had no fear. They sat quietly, talking only in low murmurs that I could not make out. If Nell was right, they would soon welcome me, a prodigal son of sorts, reunited with all who have gone before.

As a few more visitors arrived, they approached my bed. Some would stand and stare and mumble something like a prayer. Others would kneel beside the bed, slipping from view until they would rise again with tears in their eyes. Some would touch my hand before they turned away and joined the others.

They did feel warm and safe. I could almost yearn for their company and to be wrapped again in family and friends, always safe and always happy. Yes, a comfort.

Maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe there is more.

Maybe life does not end like flipping a swi...

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