A Gentler Form of Haunting

This is part of the Dreams and Nightmares Series and not part of the family stories.

We were inside a ten-story red-brick building in the middle of the city with traffic whizzing by below us. It was cool and cloudy out, which was probably for the best since the building only had window a/c’s. We stood in line on the ninth floor behind maybe another twenty people, though we could see into the room where people in period costumes sat in period rocking chairs. The costumed people didn’t look up from handmade projects they were working on, though people passed into the room and asked questions.

I had made it to the doorframe and was nearly inside the room whose walls were painted navy and whose trim was deep red. Someone touched my elbow, and I turned to see a woman with short salt and pepper hair, her face lightly tanned and wrinkled.

“I hate to bother you, sir, but it’s about your father,” she said.

“Okay.”

“He’s down on the fourth floor. I thought you should come down with me.”

I nodded and stepped out of line, then followed her to an old elevator.

“How is he?” I asked inside the elevator.

“You’ll see,” she said without looking at me.

The elevator dinged, the door opened, and we entered a dank hallway lit by florescent lights. She led me to a room, and as I stepped through the doorway, I saw my father sitting upright in a hospital bed, clad in a hospital gown. A female nurse stood on his right hand wearing a white nurse’s cap that must have dated to the 1950s.

“Looking pretty good, Mr. Laws,” she said, peering at a monitor. She wrote something in a chart.

Dad saw me and motioned with his left hand to a chair on the side opposite the nurse.

I moved to that seat and sat. Dad wore his plastic-framed glasses. His cheeks were full and pink but not bloated like they would be later in the last throes of his illness. He wore a scoop-neck garment top under the hospital gown; his neck skin was soft and slightly sagging.

“How are you, son?” he said and his tone was serious. He was normally a man to smile a lot, wink, put others at ease, but here he was almost stern-faced.

“I’m okay, Dad. How about you?”

He sighed wearily. “I have this bed sore on my backside. I can’t really feel it, but they sit me up and lay me down and roll me over to try to take pressure off of it. And they clean it twice a day.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know about the bed sore. It’s pretty bad.”

“We’re doing all we can,” said the nurse.

“You seem better than I last remember you, Dad,” I said.

“Do I? Not much has really changed.”

The woman who brought me to Dad’s room cleared her throat. “We need to lay him down and turn him.”

“Okay,” I said. I patted his hand. “I’ll see you, Dad.”

I spent a few hours wandering the old building. I caught up with Lauren and the kids. We moved in and out of different rooms, but I couldn’t focus on the rooms.

“I can’t believe he is here,” I said. “I should go back and spend more time with him, but he didn’t seem very happy to see me.”

“It’s up to you,” Lauren said. “But we do have to go soon.”

We took the elevator to the ground floor. I said, “Go get the car. I’m going to run up and say goodbye to him.”

“Okay,” Lauren said. She headed down the tall brick stairs to the sidewalk.

I turned back to the building, then saw the woman who had first come to get me. She stood on the landing near the door. I approached her.

“We need to leave,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “We will be here.”

“How is he really?” I said.

“It’s hard to say,” she said.

My eyes welled with tears. “I really have to go,” I said, “but I am afraid I won’t ever see him again.”

“I can’t guarantee you will,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like he is going soon. But then these things can happen fast when you are in his condition.”

The tears flowed freely now, and I had to get away.

I opened my eyes to darkness and the need to go to the restroom. The sixteenth anniversary of Dad’s death was exactly three weeks ago. I was bishop at the time. My first time back to Church was Easter Sunday, and it felt unbearable to sit on the stand and listen to sermons about death, hope, and resurrection.

I looked at the clock: 6:06 am, March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday. I would prefer that Dad try a gentler form of haunting.