Night Walker

I have never seen a ghost.  I've been pretty much ambivalent on their existence all my life.   Until now. 

On the way home from coffee after work the other night, I took the usual route, taking care to avoid going too far down West Michigan.  I will pass the scene if I have to, but avoiding has become as automatic as stopping at a red light.  Without a lot of thought, my hands will do the work of avoiding the trigger:  hanging a right on Bedford, followed by a left on East Willard- which brings me to my street, two houses from my own.  Every time I pause at the yield sign, I register that I am partway through the last walk Cory ever took, and shudder either outwardly, inwardly, or both. 

On the worst sort of days, the ones in which flashbacks run rampant and comfort does not exist, I can just make her out there on the other side of the road:  blonde wavy hair streaked with pink, Where the Wild Things Are t-shirt, her new shorts from Macy's, woven belt, and the Hello Kitty sneaks.  I can see her there, a sort of half illusion/half conjured figure, walking with her head down, intent on finishing the task at hand, eager to get back to the a.c. and her family.

Each time this happens is torture enough, and I am merely glad I only have a few hundred yards to the driveway.  Better this stretch of my road, then the other two-thirds, that ends in images that will never leave my mind.  They are red and blue and black, dark and ominous, the colors of hurt, the colors of suffering.

Have I told you I hate living on this street?  In this neighborhood?  That every time I make a run to anywhere, I have to navigate against my emotions to get there?   That every time I pass her "spot" as her friends call it, I remember being there, screaming, and demanding that someone do something.  Or maybe that's what I wish I'd done.  I think, more likely, I only screamed, and asked every two seconds if she was breathing, unable to understand why no one would answer me.  Was it so obvious to everyone but me that she was clearly dead?

And all I can think about, on the heels of those memories that burn and scourge, are her final moments.  What was she thinking about?  Did she see the car coming for her?  Did she hurt?

That is the final indignity that feeds my rage.  There had been months and years of anguish for her that I couldn't do a damn thing about.  It killed this mother's heart to watch her suffer.  The only comfort I could provide was my presence.  "You're safe, Cory-Girl.  I won't let anyone hurt you."  It was never enough.  It made me feel useless.  Parents are supposed to be able to help their children, to stop their pain, to kiss those boo-boos, no matter how big and ugly they might be.  So after all that, all those nights and days of appointments and meds and night terrors and delusions...it somehow all led to this unbelievably unfair ending- my brave girl, broken and bleeding on the road, left to die alone.

Yeah, I asked all the academic questions of the people in the know.  Most offered that she likely died on impact.  I question if this is true or the only cheap comfort that can be given to a mother out of her mind with grief.  I will always return to the bystander, a neighbor from just around the way, who said when they first checked her, she was still breathing.  But by the time the ambulance got there, she wasn't. 

I think about this night after night when sleep won't come, and the road beckons, Cory being turned over so slowly, her blue lips throwing an ice cold bucket of water over my heart as I began to consider the impossible.  She was still breathing said the witness, one of the only people who would actually know for sure.  Did she hurt?  Did she want me, and I wasn't there? 

Somehow, that seems the most bitter failure of all.  What kind of parent lets their child die alone?

These are the thoughts that run through what's left of mind when I drive on my road.  I was well into them, when I rolled up to the Yield sign the other night, in the twilight that was just becoming full dark, and glanced to my left.  I slammed on the brakes, and just gaped at the small figure trudging along the nearest side of Miller Avenue.  Cory?!!!!  Oh my God, is that Cory???

Joy I haven't felt since that summer afternoon leapt up into my heart.  Could this be happening?  I pulled further into the fork in the road and looked, putting on my left turn signal.  As I did, the figure looked over its shoulder, and I clearly saw the face.  Not Cory's.

Same build.  Same height.  Same jean/hoodie uniform she'd be wearing this time of year.  Same headband/ponytail running-to-the-store everyday casual hair do.  Same walk, even:  head down, eyes on the road, shoulders slightly rounded in.  But it wasn't her. 

I guess I should've known.  I'd never my girl walk in the dark.