Whately Prep The Buttonball Tree p.4

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Kelly’s mysterious absence from the Connecticut River doesn’t make sense to me.  Her last moments were spent on the River.  I was alone with her when it happened.  There was an elaborate investigation to try to pin the accident on me.  That’s how I felt, at least. When it happened, it was unthinkable that life could go on, that I would go forward. I was engulfed in a sorrow so great, that I wondered if I would survive it.

I survived.

The price I have paid for surviving is that Kelly watches over me most of the time. Other people have shadows, I have Kelly.  She is a silent observer of all that I do, both bad and good.  In her manifestation, she has not aged.  Oddly, she has a wardrobe that changes seasonally.  I notice that.  I notice that her chest moves as if she were breathing, but of course, she’s not.  I notice her eyes blink.  Her mouth moves, but never to form words.  I can read her expression as well as I ever could.  This fall, it will be ten years since she died.  Ten years.

When she first started visiting me, I told her to cross-over, find the light, do what spirits do. Go.  Instead, I saw more of her.  I made the mistake of telling people.  Oddly, it was only Declan who believed me.  I asked if he could see her, too.  He said, “No, but sometimes I feel her.”

Thinking I must be having some kind of psychological breakdown, I made an appointment with a psychologist.  Three sessions in, she said I needed to talk to a psychiatrist who could also medicate me.  For three years, I was a compliant and cooperative patient who took anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications.  I talked out my unresolved issues.  Nothing changed.  Kelly came to therapy with me,  She rode home, or if I met friends for dinner after therapy, she sat at the next table.  Kelly was relentless.  

I used the Internet to research psychic phenomenon.  After trying seances and readings and occult gatherings (all of which Kelly attended), I gave up.  Imagine my utter surprise when, finally, finally, someone other than me saw her.  A prospective parent visiting Whately Prep was in my office.  Ostensibly, we were alone.  Of course, Kelly was sitting in the corner, staring out the window.  The mother interrupted my description of the endowment at Whately Prep.  “Excuse me, I just wondered why you asked a student to join us for this conversation. “

My stomach lurched uncomfortably.  I thought I might be sick in the wastebasket under my desk.  I was so startled that I couldn’t speak for a moment.  Kelly turned toward me. The mother, Clara Carter, said, “Oh, but she looks just like you, she must be your daughter.”  

My eyes glanced at the family portrait taken the year before, absent Kelly.  Maybe it was all an unkind and elaborate ruse.  Clara, sensing my dismay, spoke directly to Kelly, “We stopped in Sunderland to see the Buttonball Tree, I didn’t know they make necklaces.  Is that where you found yours?”  

I had never told anyone, not even Declan, that, on the morning of the day she died, I bought Kelly a silver Buttonball necklace.  As I clasped it around her neck, she turned to me with a broad smile and said, “I’ll never take it off Mummy, never, ever.”  

Headstones Whately Prep, p3

There is a small cemetery slightly off the trail that leads down to the River.  The headstones are old and moss-covered for the most part.  The two most recent ones, my father’s and my daughter’s are carved into smooth, grey granite.  The markers are as simple as a Protestant would allow.  I slow my pace to a walk when I pass the small graveyard that is set back inside of a white picket fence.  This land belongs to the school.  Both my father and my daughter belonged to the school, thus they belong to this land.  A syllogism if ever I saw one. 

My father died unexpectedly.  I have missed him every day since his death.  I am grateful that he did not suffer from a long, debilitating disease that robbed him of his memory or vitality.  The cause was identified; It was as simple as his heart stopped beating. It has been three years since he died.  Accepting his death has been like swallowing a chicken bone; it goes down hard. 

There are times I can convince myself that Kelly is not gone.  The idea is at once. so preposterous, so out of the realm of possibility, that I literally find myself on autopilot planning doctors appointments, hair appointments and trips for Kelly.  I have had to keep secret that she comes to me.  In the house, on the soccer fields, during morning assemblies, I see Kelly.  The only place that I am not haunted by her is when I am along, or in, the Connecticut River.