I believe in ghosts.  I can’t help it.  I used to try helping it but not anymore.  Used to be I was embarrassed because I should know better.  Because I was raised by scientists.  Because it seemed simple-minded and retrograde to believe in what basically amounts to magic.

But now?

Fuck it.

***

My grandfather, Nonno Luis, died when I was twelve.  He lived in Santiago, Chile so I didn’t see him often, but I loved him very much.  He loved me too.  He had been sick for a long time with some kind of cancer that remains a mystery to me–bone cancer?

One night he visited me in a dream.  I did not usually dream of him so this was unique.  He told me that he had come to say goodbye.  I awoke and sat up like a bolt–like in the movies, like in that way that seems fake in the movies.  I sat up breathless  in the pitch dark and spoke these words aloud:

“Nonno Luis died.”

I didn’t feel sad at that moment despite the fact that I knew my words to be true.  I felt calm and happy.  I simply lay down and went back to sleep.

At breakfast the next morning, my mom came into the kitchen and told me:

“Nonno Luis died.”

I remember watching the cereal in my bowl turn into a watery blur as tears filled my eyes.  I felt very, very sad, and I cried.  This was the first great sadness of my life.

***

Over the decades that passed after my grandfather’s death, I travelled to Chile often to visit family generally and my grandmother, Nonna Maffi, in particular.  (One thing I have been most grateful for in my life has been this opportunity to transition from knowing my grandmother as a child into knowing her as an adult.)  Nonna Maffi was a discreet person by nature but not an overly- guarded person, and our conversations were some of the most open and surprising I’ve ever had.

After a two year stay with our family in Irvine, she returned to Chile, and I went to visit her shortly after her return.  One afternoon during that visit, in her little house in Santiago, during tea, she told me in her plain and straightforward way that Nonno Luis had visited her.

“Welcome back!” he had said.  She told me that she had wanted to embrace him, but he said that he was very tired and had to go.  He promised to come back.  And then he was gone.  I learned over subsequent years of conversation with Nonna Maffi that he had kept his promise and returned regularly for brief visits.

My grandmother was no mystic.  Do not be tempted to pin some sort of South-American-magic-realism cultural influence on her.  She was traditional–conservative in many ways.  She died a few years ago with every synapse still firing accurately and on time.  I can’t explain her experience or mine.  She couldn’t explain it either, though–truth be told–she seemed wholly uninterested in explanations.

***

Are my poor parents’ scientific evidence-based ears burning?  Probably.  Sorry guys.  I can’t help it.  (I will mention though…you did make me.  It’s not like beliefs come out of nowhere like magic.  Just saying.)