She continued to see her after she died. Always in the early morning or late at night when her eyes and mind were blurry from sleep. It was always very faint, something out of the farthest corner of her eye, of her periphery, the slightest of movements or subtle change in the light that only her eye could perceive and she’d turn her head and, of course, there wasn’t anyone or anything there except the couch and the side table and the lamp from her grandmother’s house and the curtains on the window and the window itself. And it was always in the living room and always before the sun had risen when she was getting up for work or when she stayed up too late and should have been in bed hours before and even though she could never really quite see her, as in see an actual spectral figure she knew she was there, sitting on the left side of the couch, waiting. Or it seemed like she was waiting and it wasn’t scary or startling, it was comforting to know that she was there, just sitting there waiting for her or waiting for whomever or whatever, but there. And it almost felt like she was still there, as in she was still an active part of her life. And that was what was comforting, I mean she knew she was dead, she wasn’t losing her mind or blind from grief, though she had grieved and did grieve, but she was sane and rational and yet there she sat on her couch, waiting or seeming to wait. And then early one morning she looked over at the couch out of habit expecting to see, though not really see, to know that she was there, and she wasn’t. And the next morning too she wasn’t there and on Thursday when she stayed up to late and feel asleep in the arm chair and she had turned out the light and looked back at the couch as she was walking into her bedroom and she could just barely make out the left end of the couch in the dark and though she couldn’t really see in the darkness, she knew she wasn’t there. And she knew instinctually that she never would be again.
©2020 by Amy Driesler