Why should I let the fire die?

I believe in superstition, supernatural, ethereal, and ghostly. It is rooted in me. Or rather I think it roots me. What it comes down to, I think, is a need for me to feel, because I rarely believe in god, that there is something unseen in this world working for me and against me. There is that spark. Ghosts, spirits, dreams, and breezes. I would like to think they all come from the same place.
From a very young age I knew how to read people’s palms and cast stones. My brother and my mother taught me to interpret runes and I had my first deck of Tarot cards (willed to me by mother) by the time I was ten.
I believed, foolishly or not, that from the time I was
nine until twelvethat a ghost, a spirit, a specter, followed me around. Creeping in room corners, black and formless. Knocking over glasses of juice and making the hairs on the back of my dog’s neck stand on edge. He never growled or hunkered down, unless it was around.
I remember the first time I met my friend Kate’s mother. I entered her front door and from the kitchen I heard:
“Kate who is with you.?”
“Just a friend mother.”
“He’s the one.”
“Mother.”
I turned to Kate and laughed.
“She thinks we’re dating.”
“Oh god no.”
“It’s him isn’t it? The one on the other side of the bridge.” Her voice lilted from the kitchen.
“Ben, I should have warned you about my mother.”
Kate’s mother entered, fiery red hair, paint on her cheek and a crooked smile. She looked like what I would imagine my mother would have if she had ever gone to college.
“Oh my god, this IS him. He is the one.” She gave me a hug, both arms and surprisingly firm. “Oh…oh my god. He was your brother. Twins. Two lives ago.”
“Jesus, mother. He’s a guest.” Kate stamped her foot and plopped down on her living room couch.
“I’m Ben,” I said, “And I’m really confused.”
“Last week- god, you’re energy is so blue- last week I did a spirit journey for my Katie. She reached a bridge that she couldn’t cross on her own. And there you appeared, on the other side, helping her across. She won’t know you for long, but she needs you right now.”
Kate had turned her attention to the television and clicked her tongue crisply.
“Goodness,” she said, “You must have no clue what I am talking about, do you?”
“Actually,” I laughed. “I do. I’ve never done…the…uh…journeys. But I’ve been around people who…er…journeyed.”
“Of course you have,” she beamed. “Promise. Whatever you do. You will keep it.”
“Keep it?”
“The light. Your light.”
“Oh…yeah. Sure thing.”
My light, as she put it. Constantly got in the way. If my mother was throwing cards for friends, I wasn’t allowed to be in the room. It “interfered” with their energy. I remember once, going with a friend to a tarot reading at a shop. The lady asked me politely to leave the room. My friend objected, but I told her it was okay and that I understood.
Kate and I never spoke again after high school. Her mother was right, Kate needed me then, but wouldn’t need me later. And I don’t feel regret, and I don’t feel as if I’ve lost someone. Kate’s mother assured me I would meet Kate again. I assumed, for her, that meant in another life.
The acute thing is. I never accepted it all as gospel. Part of me doubted it. My light. A connection. Stories, myths, hymns are a part of my family history. Apparitions warning my grandmother. People talking to my aunt at night who were never there. When she passed, she would visit my mother, who had always believed. But when she would speak of Lady visiting her, she would make it seem like it was a mind’s trick.
“Vicky said the funniest thing last night. In my dream that is.” Behind a half smile, with a dip in her voice.
My father, whose family had more history than I, wouldn’t hear of it. I suppose that is where my doubt came from. And after he left, his doubt remained, and became my doubt.
At a young age, I remembered my dreams with frequency and I could control every action and thing I said. Some dreams though, went along their own course. I came to learn they were warnings, or predictions. A tremor shook southern
Indianawhen I was nine. All of my friends and family knew it was coming, because I told them. When my cousin cut his hand in the playground on a broken coke bottle, I knew to have the tissue ready. And when my friend from high school was diagnosed with leukemia, I was prepared and the majority of my shock had already passed. I recall my friend, Sarah, smacked me the day we learned. Saying that my dream had made it come sooner. Others refused to talk to me for days.
It was events like these that made me reticent to explore my connections. Now when friends move into new apartments, I don’t like helping them unpack, for fear of ruining their joy with stories of what happened in their place before they were there. When my pals ask me to throw cards or read palms, I hesitate, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, and worse still I don’t want to underwhelm them. It is so easy to be skeptical.
Over the years, my connection waned. I stopped remembering my dreams, save two or three annually. Lights stopped going off on their own, and when the phone rang I couldn’t tell who was calling. Brooms would fall and company wouldn’t come. I stopped counting the birds in the sky and didn’t care when they landed. The lighted had faded, but I would learn, that it would never leave me.
Still prone to intuitive feelings and occasional flashes, I was nearing the graduation of my college years. I had a dream. That I remembered. I was out to dinner with my friends. Twenty of them, at least, from all corners of my life. When the bill came they all pulled out their wallets and I waved them away with a move of my hand.
“But Ben,” asked Lara, “How can you afford to pay for all of this?”
“From my inheritance,” I replied. “He left a little something for me. And now I give it to you.”
I woke in the morning and immediately wrote my dream down in my diary. I called a few friends to tell them of my dream and asked for their interpretations.
A week later, on the day of my college graduation, my father died.
And now, I miss it. My connection, that light. I want to dream in color again. I want to feel things, the bad and the good, that made me feel connected. If the only time the light returns, is when something awful happens I would rather go dark or shine at 100 watts.
And I am not sure how to go about it. How to reclaim “the fire”. Maybe as you get older, it leaves, and there is no choice. But I refuse to doubt anymore. I don’t expect anyone to believe me either. I don’t expect them to believe in it. I just hope that they believe, that I believe.