Like I said, I haven’t been seeing ghosts my whole life. Except for watching old movies, or Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons, I’d never even thought about ghosts.
At least not before the accident.
Better I start at the beginning…
It was the summer after eighth grade. We were living in Middleton that year where Dad was teaching at Middleton College, (for the time being).
It had been a pretty good summer for me. I had just spent a whole entire year at the same school and had actually made some friends.
It was like my whole life was finally coming together.
Little did I know.
We were inner-tubing down a river when it happened. Mom, Dad, and I had gone on a camping trip – my first camping trip ever. “This’ll be a memorable trip,” Dad blustered. “We’re going to have adventures in the great American wilderness! I’m predicting an unforgettable experience for all.”
Turns out he was right about that.
Like I said, we were riding down a river in inner-tubes.
It was really hot that weekend. I’d spent a sleepless night crammed into a sleeping bag that was designed for arctic explorers, sweating and wondering what sort of man eating creatures were lurking outside the tent.
A long float down a cool river sounded just like the ticket.
Mom was leery about the whole thing. Usually she’s Ms. In-Control, but Mom’s a city girl at heart, and you could see that the whole wilderness thing unnerved her.
“Are you sure this is safe? There won’t be any snakes will there?”
That kind of thing.
Of course, Dad and I used that anxiety as an opportunity to torture her.
“Snakes?” Dad responds thoughtfully, “not a chance. The crocodiles eat them all.”
She got her revenge by slathering us both in smelly sunscreen and making me wear a really dorky lifejacket.
Before long, the three of us were floating merrily down the river in our inner-tubes. Dad was singing bizarre old sea shanties, “ What do you do with a drunken sailor…” (and drawing weird looks from the fishermen and rafters that shared the river with us). Mom was trying to pretend she didn’t know him, while I looked for opportunities to freak her out.
“Whoa! Is that a snake? (Insert shriek here) Never mind, it’s just a stick.” Then she would say something rude and try to splash me.
Looking back, I’m realizing that this is one of the few times my family actually did something fun together. Don’t get me wrong. My parents are actually pretty cool to hang around with. It’s just we never really go places and do fun stuff, and this camping trip was shaping up to be a lot of actual fun..
Until my accident anyway.
We’d been in the river about fifteen minutes or so when the current started picking up. That was cool. A little whitewater action, (OK, very little whitewater action, but I was having fun).
But then I notice that up ahead the river had undercut part of the bank and three or four big trees had fallen face first into the channel. It was quite a mess; (these were big trees), and the current was pulling me right into them.
I’m thinking, “This is not good,” and I start paddling furiously to keep from smashing into that huge snarl of logs, branches, and roots.
But the current was too powerful, and I was getting sucked right into the whole horrible mess. A humongous wall of dead, tangled wood loomed ahead, and then there was that moment of realization: this is it. I’m dead. There’s nothing I can do.
Smashing into the branches I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I was under water.
Then, “Wham!” something hits me in the head and out go the lights.
This will sound bizarre, but the next thing I know I’m looking down on the river.
Below me I can see this pathetic looking kid in an orange lifejacket. He’s all tangled up in a maze of tree branches and they’re holding him under water. Some people are frantically tugging at him and trying to get him out of the water and one of them looks a lot like my dad.
And as I’m floating there some twenty feet up, calm as can be, it occurs to me, that is my dad and the kid down there drowning is me.
Not that this upsets me much, mind you; it’s like I’m just noticing it, you know?
Then suddenly I’m shooting down this…I don’t know…it seemed like some kind of tunnel…at what feels like a million miles an hour…toward the brightest light I’ve ever seen.
And standing at the end of the tunnel, bathed in that impossibly bright light, I see my Grampa Nick.
Grampa Nick! Only my most favorite person in the whole world! The one human being I could say anything to without feeling like a dork!
I was so happy to see him that it didn’t even seem strange for him to be standing at the end of that weird tunnel of light waiting for me with open arms. It should have seemed strange.
After all, he’d been dead for more than three years.
“Grampa Nick!” I’m yelling, “Grampa Nick!”
“Marco!” he grins, “another fine mess you’ve got yourself into.”
“Grampa,” I started, “wha’…”
“Now Marco, you hush up. You aren’t supposed t’be here yet. I’ll have t’be sendin’ you back soon.”
“But Grampa, where am I?”
“Technically you aren’t really anywhere now, Marc, but see, I’m here to tell you that you can’t be comin’ in here yet. You can’t be passin’ on yet, son, it’s not your time.”
He smiled. “Oh but it is good to see you though, Marco, and don’t you worry yourself none, we’ll be seein’ each other again by and by.”
He seemed to get smaller, like he was receding, moving away from me. Or was it me that was moving?
Then suddenly he shouted, “Marco! Wait! I got somethin’ for you!”
He struggled towards me. It was like he was swimming, forcing his way up against the current of some rushing river or hurricane wind.
Finally he reached out and pulled me to him. He wrapped me up in those strong arms of his and leaned into me like he was trying to tell me a secret.
Suddenly, I felt myself filling with…well it’s hard to say…it felt warm, like the feeling that fills your body when you drink a mug of hot cocoa right after coming in from the snow, but this was more vibrant, electric… It was like suddenly I knew something, but I had no idea what it was…
Grampa pulled away and smiled mischievously. It was that now-don’t-be-tellin’-your-folks-about-this smile that he always gave me when he and I did some really cool thing that we weren't supposed to. Like when he snuck me into Louie’s Bar and Grill to watch the World Series with his buddies. "Don't worry 'bout Marc's age, Louie," he'd said. "He has a 21 year old soul."
Or the time when I was six and he sat me up on his lap and let me drive that old truck of his through miles and miles of gravel farm roads.
Lord, I’d missed that smile.
Grampa gave a little chuckle. “There y’go, Marco, now that oughta make things interesting.”
And then, poof, he was gone.
“Grampa?”
Suddenly, I feel like I’m flying through space. Backwards. At thousands of miles an hour.
And then I woke up.