“Can you tell me how he passed?” I texted my neighbor’s best friend to try to get more details about my next door neighbor’s sudden passing.
The blinking dots showing her impending reply caused me to hold my breath and scrunch my toes. What are you doing? my mind shouted at me, leave them all alone, they just lost someone.
The image of a figure holding the back of his head hovered above my third eye center yet again like an outline of a bright white shadow more than a face itself.
“I’m so, so sorry,” echoed above my ear drums as if it was on replay, blocking out my terrified thoughts.
“All I know is it was an accident,” the text flashed across my screen.
Okay you got your answer, my mind interjected, now can you leave them alone?
“Do you know if it was his head?” my trembling fingers typed before I could stop them.
Don’t you dare hit send, my head taunted, as my thumb pushed the message off into the unknown.
Within seconds my phone was flashing, announcing her name across my screen.
Oh God she’s calling me, I realized, what am I supposed to say now?
“Hello?” I answered, short of breath from the stirring fear within, trying to think of some condolences to share.
“Why do you ask if it’s his head?” She got right to the point.
“Um, well…” I managed, realizing that writing out that I occasionally heard voices was a lot easier than saying it out loud. “Sometimes…well, when people pass away I kind of hear them?” I asked more than stated, my face white with fear and burning hot simultaneously.
“I…I,” I continued, “I keep seeing an image of him holding his head and saying, “I’m so so sorry, I’m so so sorry.”
A gasp emitted from the other side of the line, her husband’s voice replying in the background, “That’s exactly what he would have said, just like that, over and over again.”
My heart pounded, my ears burned, not hearing his confirmation, only focused on the fact that there was more than one person privy to what I had just said.
“He took his own life, shot himself in the head,” his wife’s voice came back in a near whisper.
My mouth fell open, my eyes brimming with tears, imagining my neighbor and her daughter without their husband and dad. His image reappeared again, holding his head and apologizing over and over.
I didn’t hear the rest of the call. My mind had creeped back in as it began to realize that I truly wasn’t making this up, I wasn’t imagining it, it was real.
As they said their goodbyes, it was as though I floated into the next room, no longer connected to my body. My sixth-month-old daughter’s cries eventually landing me back in myself again.
Scooping her up in my arms, my mind shouted, you better make sure she doesn’t tell your neighbor's wife what you just said! I sprinted back to my phone, my daughter bouncing along with me.
“Can you come over tomorrow?” the text had already appeared on my screen, my newly widowed neighbor’s name right above it.
My heart leapt into my throat as I instinctively rocked my fussy baby, her eyes and mine both wet with tears, I typed back, “Yes, what time?”
Every part of my being shouted no, but an even greater force calmly said yes.
Once the reply was sent and the time was arranged, the panic sank in. I have to share messages tomorrow from her husband that just passed… how am I going to do that? My mind raced, trying to make sense of it all. And more importantly… how am I going to tell my own husband that I can hear dead people?
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