Death, reincarnation, extrasensory perception, anything supernatural and from the Great Beyond fascinated you and your friends in 7th grade, so Santa thought you might get a kick out of a means of contacting the Dead and brought you a Ouija board. Then your Jehovah’s Witness friend came over.

From the perspective and wisdom of many decades later, what transpired next makes sense. Every year before and after, this kid had to watch all of the other kids around her enjoy the cornucopia of Christmas as well as every other holiday in the Christian calendar while she had to go to “meeting” three times per week and didn’t even get to celebrate her own birthday. On top of that, the other kids, including you, were jerks about it. Heck, you were probably a bit of a jerk that day what with all of these nice, new things, some of which she coveted but you wouldn’t let her touch because, let’s be honest, your nice, new things usually didn’t remain nice, new things for very long in her hands. So, you can now understand that she would look for something to lord over you.

“You know those things only attract demons,” she said, pointing at the Ouija Board. “I can’t play with you anymore.” She stalked out of the house.

You would normally have thought your twelve-year old version of “well, fuck you, too.” This wasn’t your first time at her holier-than-thou rodeo. You didn’t even believe in demons. Just spirits. Instead, your dad found you in tears in your room. You honestly didn’t know what had so upset you, but it probably had something to do with feeling as if your loyalties had been torn. Torn between your different friends, torn between your parents and this friend, torn for some deeper reason that you still cannot fathom.

Was it this that prompted the séance? Or did the séance happen a few weeks later? In any case, you and your dad took out the Ouija Board and conducted one of the only two seances for which this one was used. Balanced between your knees, fingertips on the planchet, eyes closed. Did your dad ask the questions? “Is any spirit out there?” “Can anyone hear us?” “Answer us?” Nothing happened. You don’t think you actually thought it would.

When nothing happened, he told you that, when his time came, he would try to contact you from the Other Side and let you know what was there. This did not comfort you. This disturbed you. Not the Other Side part because that seemed exciting, but the dying part. The same stabbing in your stomach and tears that you had felt earlier came. You didn’t yet have the power to shut it off.

Now you do the math. Now you understand the way time passes for an adult. Granny, your dad’s mother had died when you were eight. Perhaps this séance had happened a few weeks after the friend had stalked out. If it had, perhaps it happened on the anniversary of her death in February. You won’t ever know now. In child time, four years might as well be an eon. When you are twelve, four years is a third of your life.

Four years for a man in his sixties is yesterday, and your grief for your Granny resurrected whenever your Grampy, your dad’s dad, visited. Your aunt, your father’s sister, once told you that he grieved as if no other man had ever lost his wife before. You have no way to measure this, to understand or evaluate this, as an adult. You do remember that his sadness draped all of his visits and made you relive her loss. He was visiting when the friend walked out, telling you that the Ouija board would contact demons. When he saw you crying, he asked, “a touch of the holiday blues?” You didn’t understand what that meant. You do now. You can hear the sympathy in his voice.

Four years for a man in his thirties is the day before yesterday, especially for a man who calculated, down to the minute, the moment when he would reach he exact age that his mother had been at the time of her death. He waited for that moment, expecting to die. He did not. Not then, anyway. He did not receive an epiphany, either.

When you arrived at your mother’s house on the day that he died, you went to her (already it is “her” not “their”) hall closet, pulled out the Ouija board, and set it up on the coffee table. They had moved three times since you were twelve. That they had kept this one thing of all things, used twice, stored in the attic or a closet for most of your life, seemed so bizarre and random.  You feel sharply that you do not believe in the Afterlife. “And this is the reason that people invented it,” you think as you sense the outlines of something hollow and finite in your guts. Still, you leave the board out overnight as a memorial to the memory and a dare to your lack of faith. You put it away the next day, disappointed that you are disappointed that you are disappointed that nothing had happened to change your lack of faith.

On the morning of his funeral, you think of this séance again as you shower. One of the lights in the bathroom flickers. Did you imagine it? No. There it goes. Flickering. A Morse Code. If it were supernatural, shouldn’t you feel something more, as if something momentous or frightening were happening? What if this is it? What if your lack of belief — and knowledge of Morse Code – prevents you from hearing his message? “This is the reason that people invented ghosts,” you think. The lightbulb burned out.

Since this ordeal began, so many people have said that they will pray for you. They mean it. They ask your name when they do not know you because they must say your name in their prayers. This sincerity astonishes and humbles you; but you cannot say the same in return, although you wish them love and the best possible outcome and that the person they love remain with them as long as possible with as little pain as possible. They may not share their love if they knew that you look to the end and see an end. When the minister speaks of grace being within God’s love, you understand why some theologians spoke of Hell being the absence of God’s love because you do not feel any sense of meeting those you love or have loved in some Great Beyond. These things are beautiful thoughts created to endure excruciating pain.

You just feel death as the end. The absolute end. No reincarnation. No heaven. No hell. No afterlife. No ghosts. No spirits moving planchets on a Ouija board.