To the dead woman who lives in my backyard

Everyone used to ask me if I was scared of ghosts growing up.

I’d lived behind a cemetery since I was six months old. If they were real, I’d be the expert.

Out of sight, out of mind.

My high school best friend told me she used to see a ghost on her way home from middle school in a coastal Northern California town. He’d bark orders at her in Spanish.

Teenagers used to climb the rusted old water tower in the baseball park near my house. The legend was if you make it to the top, shine your headlights and honk three times, the ghost of a cheerleader would appear. And jump to her death.

Over and over and over.

In the same incessant nature, my four-year-old has taken to asking me about death every day.

Where do people go when they die?
Am I going to die? When? Are you?
Do dead people only have heads and no bodies?
…Heads are a part of your body?

Each question elicits one or two measured responses, and then a lot of internal questioning.

How do I answer these existential questions when I’m in between life and death myself?

When I’m stuck in one place for an indeterminate amount of time.

And if I tell her the truth? My adult truth?

She’d surely find no reason to keep on living.

A week ago we walked through the cemetery and saw a square of daffodils blooming around your family plot.

She felt shy.

I tried to coax her out of her shell by offering up your name—Toots.

I remember when I stopped laughing.

And every increasingly rare glimmer of hope since has been filled with it.

The only ghost I’ve ever seen is the one staring back at me every morning in the mirror with the Harry Potter patronus sticker in the upper right hand corner.

She’s thinner. Colder. Younger.

But she jumped.

Over and over and over.