As we commiserated over current strife, my dear friend told me of the bond her mother still honors even from heaven.  After fighting a long and valiant battle against cancer, there came a day when we knew Mrs. R— would soon leave us.  My friend asked her how she would let her know when her spirit was near, so she could take comfort at those times when her loss was felt most deeply.  My friend expected something like the scent of roses or the appearance of a bird or some sign such as that.  But her mom had something else in mind.

“Oh, I think I’ll just offer a little pocket change,” she said with a smile.  Her passing was peaceful and welcome.  She was ready, even if the rest of us were not.

Many times in the last two years, my dear friend has had those moments when the longing strikes so deep.  Those moments when she could use a hug or a word from Mom to ease the worry and pain of a bad day or a family crisis.  And wouldn’t you know it, at those very moments, almost without fail, she will look down and find a dime.  A simple little dime.

They have appeared on the street, on the floor at home, in the gear box of her car.  Always at that moment when she was thinking hard about her mom…and always just a dime.  Not a penny or a nickel or a quarter.

I remember our childhood, and how much Mrs. R— had to scrape by at times, the single mother of 4 kids with a deadbeat ex-husband who refused to honor his child support.  A little pocket change always helped.  When my friend told me this story last night, it swelled my heart.  How perfectly sensible…and how perfectly Mom.

It has been said that the ones who love us never really leave us.  I know that it’s true.

I have neglected this poor blog for far too long, so I must do my best to resuscitate it.  While I don’t have a fresh ghost story, I do have a new perspective. I pass by this little grave yard everyday, though I hardly think of it anymore.  I first came upon it on one of my earliest visits to the ASU campus.  Just this little forgotten scrap of woods in a hidden corner of campus.  I wound my way through the smattering of old graves and stately trees dripping with Spanish moss as if to remind us how old and secret this place is.  Most of the stones are virtually illegible, worn clean by time and nature.  A number of the graves are marked with nothing more than a crumbling slab of concrete, the name of the occupant scrawled into the surface with a stick or perhaps a loving finger.

At the far end of the cemetery, several graves cling to the eroding hillside.  Pieces of their vaults protrude from the earth and hang over the creek below casting macabre shadows in the morning sun.  More graves were claimed by a 500-year flood back in the 1990′s and now only the anemic stream can tell us who once took their rest with these sad hangers-on.

There are tiny obelisks marked with a single date, an infant most likely.  A few more formal stones peek out from the ever-growing brush.  This is the resting place of Albany’s poor, a small number of them anyway.  These are the remains of those who had few to mourn them and little to live on let alone die on.  Someone tends this little graveyard from time to time.  Someone clears away some of the weeds and the overgrown grass around the markers.  Mostly, this cemetery just waits alone, ignored by the young life that drives by it every day and parks beside it, and shuffles into the classrooms just beyond it to learn.  I wonder…what spirits wander here with lessons of their own?

One of the highlights of our trip was the Haunted Wilmington Walking Tour.  Our erstwhile guide took us through the back alleys and condemned lots of the city to share some fascinating tales of paranormal activity, including some commentary on the famous USS North Carolina which was featured on GHOST HUNTERS on more than one occasion.

The first leg of our journey took us to the site of what used to be a pediatric hospital, now the offices of an architectural firm, where many a poor child spent his last days.  The story goes that the souls of what have not become affectionately known as the “Freaky Dead Children” regularly moan, scratch, and pound at the basement doors.  Of course our stalwart teens leaned their ears up to the door and listened, as well as adding their own thumps here and there to freak out the others who were brave enough to set their ear to the steel door.  The occasional squeal of a 10-year-old girl in the group just added to the fun.

But a very interesting stop landed us in front of an old yellow house built in 1898.  The Susan Moore house was once a flop house where all manner of degenerates and undesirables took refuge from their rough and rowdy pasts.  Apparently the past caught up with one of her more colorful tenants, and it was there that he drew his last breath at the hands of a vengeful murderer.  Now it seems that the man in black, as he is now called, has decided to remain, perhaps waiting for his own opportunity for vengeance.

As we stood on the pavement outside, our guide pointed out the center window upstairs and emphasized that the house was padlocked and well sealed up.  No one could possible be in that house, no one living, that is.  Nonetheless, it appeared that someone was watching us from that window, lifting the corner of the lace curtain from time to time to take a better look.  ”Holy Shit!” a man behind me exclaimed when he saw the curtain ruffling.  Many of us snapped photos and I longed for the “good” camera.  But my little 5-year-old Finepix seem to be satisfied with a few haunting images, nonetheless.  What do you think?  Can you see the man in black staring back at us through the lace?

Look in the upper left-hand pane and zoom in if you need to.  Is there a man with a dark handle-bar mustache in a black pea-coat sizing us up?  Whether it is just a trick of the lace, or matrixing, or an honest-to-goodness ghost, I cannot say, but it did feel as though we were being watched.

Is the Man in Black staring back at us?

I’ve always wondered about the daily (or nightly) habits of ghosts.  What do they do without their physical body’s to inflict action upon this world?  It’s fascinating to watch Ghost Hunters or some of the other programs that try to document the paranormal.  You can only imagine the energy it must take to make something move or to accomplish an audible sound, whether it’s a voice or a knock or whatever.  What would I do without my body?

This also brings up the evolution of my own spiritual understandings.  As a kid, my vision of the afterlife was pretty simple.   I thought that good people went to heaven and bad people went to hell and ghosts were just sort of caught in between for a variety of reasons.  My image of heaven resembled that of most Christian kids.  An Eden-like place where the grass is always lush and green, the animals are tame, and everyone is happy. I was raised Catholic, but the whole purgatory thing was too confusing, so I just put that idea back on the discard pile and played my wildcard notion that wherever ghosts are hanging out, it must be a sort of limbo land that’s close enough that we can hear them or see them sometimes.   But I always wondered what ghosts thought of heaven.  If it’s so fabulous, why don’t they all go there?  Why would they want to hang around here?

As I’ve grown, experienced life, read philosophy, theology, and Rudolf Steiner, my sense of the afterlife has shifted into something a little less corporeal and far more ethereal.  No longer do I imagine family members smiling at me and welcoming me to paradise (I seriously doubt 4 particular relatives would be all that thrilled to see me).  I imagine a simple consciousness drifting around, observing other consciousnesses.  It’s all pared down to the bare life force.

That being said, I wonder how ghosts see this world.  Is it like looking through rippled glass where everything is there, but nothing comes into full focus?   Or is it more like staring through a plate glass window?  Or maybe it’s like taking one of those rides at Disney World where holograms surround you—you can see them, but they have no substance.   In the end, I have to ask…who in this equation is actually lacking substance?   I’m not sure I can answer that one.  Yet.

Amid the concrete slabs and marble memorials, trinkets and flowers and little notes seemed to scream, “you are not forgotten.”  But as we searched for those who had served in wartime, we found that this little graveyard seems to have lost its place in the communal memory of our little town.  Neglected, overgrown, but nonetheless a living part of the community, the details seem to have lost their way.  Broken stones and washed out markers are not uncommon in old country cemeteries, but there seemed to be a sense of “it doesn’t matter anyway” here.  Artificial flowers lay half buried in in the dirt where they had fallen over who knows when.  A weather-beaten teddy bear, obviously carried away from its true perch by some wild critter or storming wind, and plopped in the middle of the grass as an offering for the fire ants.  All manner of statuary and trinkets tipped over, scattered about, or broken.  But to the folks who continue to leave such remembrances it does matter.

What struck me on this day in which we remember the men and women who risked their lives, and often gave them, in service to our country, was that only a few of their graves had been marked with a flag.  I wished that I had brought a bundle of them, and next year I will.  Whether their souls hung near and heard my thanks, I don’t know, but I whispered it anyway.  To every veteran we found, I said “thank you.”  Only one had perished in combat.  The rest had lived on, long past the end of their war.  I wonder what life after war was for them.  I wonder if they are at rest now.

We saw veterans from Viet Nam, the Korean War, WWII, WWI, the Civil War, and even the Spanish American War.  Someone had placed a confederate flag on the grave of soldier for the CSA, but no American flag.  Sad.

But as I walk through the cemetery with my children, I see life in progress.  We read the history of a small Southern town connecting with a country and a world much larger than it can imagine.  Love stories, epic family sagas, religious awakenings, immigrant journeys.  So many stories there.

The cemetery is one place where my children learn what has changed and what hasn’t.  It’s more than a cycle or circle of life.  It’s patterns.  It’s lines and shapes that stretch out to infinity.  And as we were leaving the cemetery that day, I couldn’t help notice this stray fallen marker splayed out across a stone slab:

It seemed as if this little oasis was trying to tell me something.  I guess that’s why I have always been fascinated by ghosts.  I get the feeling that a lot of us simply aren’t done yet, that there is more to say after this script…

There will be more to come.

I promise.