It's a family thing

Riley Irwin

10 August 2008

There are things we learn as youngsters that stay with us all our lives, even if we grow old and get smart and know better. My sister, Rita, loved cardinals, not the ball group, the birds. When you listened to them at the church picnics, the fish fries and bingo games, you knew they were never fooling. Mrs Pisciotto talked about how St Joseph cured her man of hair loss. Mrs Diaz spoke of speaking to the spook of St Rita and asking her to take her girl into the priory. My mum mesmerized a complete card party full of girls, with her story of Jesus popping up to her in a feverish dream to inform her my sister would recover from scarlet fever. "He was right there at the foot of my bed" she would say.

She claimed to that story over and over till even I was under the impression it.

Now here I am an old writer speaking to spooks just like Mrs Diaz. I am hanging a screen doorway, and the screw breaks and I cut myself on the wire. I ask my bro Matt who, in life, was good at all those things, for help, and help always comes. I rap with my sister Eileen who was a presented artist, about issues with a painting, and the issues vanish. I'm able to even smell her favourite Beech-Nut gum. I know when my bro Jimmy is wafting around me. Jimmy was a natural stand up comic, the funniest man in the area. As I was watching John McCain standing next to Mitt Romney on a stage, I could hear Jimmy as clear as day. They appear to be Batman and his old driver, Alfred." Jimmy is right. My mummy and pa, my 3 siblings and 2 sisters, who are all now on the opposite side of the veil, are in my bedroom at night listening to my requests. We talk about cash and politics and the consistent rain. They ride in the automobile with me when I am driving, like guardian angels keeping me caution, finding parking places that I did not know were there, hitting all the lights. I really had to consider carefully before purchasing a Toyota Prius.

I could hear Matt, the smartest kid on the block, assuring me that they could all fit in' "We're ectoplasm" he murmured, "shape shifting." I swear, I am not making it up. And now this idiocy has passed on in my very own blood. Devine is an independent writer who is living in Waterville.