Three

The weird thing is I don't know how I died. These things are not always shown to the dead. Instead we must rely on others to lead us to answers through their memories of us. But what if no one remembers you? Am I just smoke dissipating from a dream?

I wish I remembered my own funeral. Did anybody speak eloquently of my short life? I know my achievements weren’t much. 8th grade spelling bee champion. Talent show runner up for my bland recital of Hamlet’s speech to Ophelia. Get thee to a nunnery never sounded so dull since the bard wrote it, I’m sure. Maybe someone said I was a good kid when I was younger, or that I had had “potential.” Im sure none of my classmates cried, certainly none of the girls. My best friend may have shed a tear in honor of how long we’d known each other, and mother might have wailed over the loss of her eldest boy, but I just couldn’t see my passing affecting anyone much. I could be wrong, but I’ll never know. That moment passed before my return as a shadow no one sees.

I tried doing like that Ghost movie my mom liked and going to a medium to see if they could at least hear me. And though the woman looked a lot like Whoopi Goldberg, she had none of her talent, humor, or ability to hear anything except a coin dropping in her purse. And in her presence I was just as helpless. I couldn’t move anything or cause a disturbance. I even screamed at the top of my lungs and sung what I thought were the correct words to “Despacito” and it still did no good.

It has to be the great cosmic joke that I can move around and go anywhere I want, but I can’t talk to a single person. No wonder in all the horror movies the spirits are angry and throwing shit around.