Remembering My Ghost

I can remember my dad’s accident. He was standing outside my bedroom window. I see this from across the street. I was barely three, I was never allowed to cross the street, but yet I see our front yard from across the street. My dad collapses and then he’s gone. MY grandparents, his parent materialize. Grandmother Sally is distraught, a cigarette hangs loosely from her mouth. Grandpa John stands to the side: aloof. Grandmother’s sadness will go away. She will have a range of emotions. Granpa John will remain aloof, or angry. He has only three emotions.

This is how I remember my dad’s parathyroid episode. This is not how it happened. My dad Was in San Antonio, TDY, temporary duty assignment, when he collapsed and had to have emergency surgery. My grandparents came to Oklahoma as soon as they could, probably a few days by car. My mother, grandmother, and I drove to San Antonio to see my dad in the hospital.

I remember none of that. I remember him removing my rusty window screen. Taking it off of the brown brick house, and setting it on the ground, and then collapsing.

It wasn’t the only brickhouse we had when I was a kid. It’s the first time I remember moving. I knew we were somewhere before the brown and red brick house in Midwest City, but no idea where.

The living room wasn’t carpeted. I’d lay on the floor on Sunday afternoons watching the Sunday Matinee’s creature features and classic Horror films. I was four years old, and my mom delights in telling my sons what a handful I was at that age. The…