Visitors From Beyond

My physical therapist, whom I presume to maintain a secret identity as a Dominatrix at night and on weekends, tortured me all week. It seems I may never walk without a visible impairment. She wears a t-shirt that says "No Pain, No Gain". I have lived much of my life pain free and have gained quite a lot of knowledge and experience. Her shirt is a lie.

I do realize she is there to assist in my transition from injured to healthy -- if that is ever possible, but I must project my pain-fueled anger onto someone and the one causing most of my current pain seems a logical target.

But this thought of transition has piqued my curiosity. When my parents' ghosts visited me in the hospital, were they there to help me transition from the living to the dead? Perhaps my moment of death was never to be the accident, but some other fate that is close at hand and their visit was merely coincidental. I will keep a record of all the ghosts who visit me. Those of friends and family will garner special attention.

J.S.

Haunted Hospital

When I was coming out of a painkiller-induced stupor, I had a couple of visitors to my bedside. My parents. My father died in 1984 and my mother in 1998. Yes, I readily agree that this vision could have been directly attributed to the powerful narcotics pulsing through my veins, melding my consciousness into some sort of surreal dreamworld. But this vision was seamlessly sewn into a visit by a nurse. I confirmed with her later that she did indeed come into my room at that moment.

My parents stood by my bedside. My father was wearing a dark blue suit -- not the one we buried him in. My mother wore her best flowery Sunday dress -- the one we DID bury her in. My father asked how I was feeling. Mother just looked upon my face with motherly concern as she placed a cold hand on my face.

I told them that I was in great pain, but that I was alive and that I would recover. They both smiled and nodded. Then my father looked toward the door and said they had to go. And in that instant, they faded away, replaced by a swinging door and a nurse coming to check on me.

This was not my only experience. I also sensed that many of the people I saw wandering around the corridors as an orderly wheeled me to another painful bout with the physical therapist were really dead. They had a far away look in their eyes. The hospital gowns they wore barely hung on their flaccid bodies. I once asked an orderly if he knew the man wandering the hall in front of us, but he seemed not to seen anyone before us. However, he did manage to miss all of them -- of course, none appeared to be directly in our way.

I suspect many dead wander the halls of hospitals. What a treat it would be to investigate in an active hospital.

That is all for now. I shall post later this week after physical therapy.

J.S.

Back from the Brink

I do apologize for not writing in my blog sooner, but I was rather incapacitated. On April 23rd, I was involved in a car accident with a dear friend. He was driving and I was the passenger. He took a sharp corner at an unsafe speed and we slipped off the roadway, crashing into a tree -- not head-on, but with my door. And my arm. And my ribs. And my leg.

My good friend suffered only a few bruises. I, on the other hand, had broken my humerus in two places, cracked four ribs, deflated one lung, and fractured my femur. Unfortunately, I did not injure my head, so I was not granted an unconscious reprieve from the deep agony of my broken body. I have spent the past two months in traction and physical therapy, a whole new agony.

I am home now, under the watchful, caring eye of my daughter. And I have a new laptop from which I will continue to post on this blog. I will attempt to post at least once per week, working around physical therapy and the pain, of course.

Oh, I do not intend to be so melodramatic. I am alive. I survived the accident and my good friend who drove that fateful day is still my good friend. But he will never again be my chauffeur.

I had some experiences in the hospital that those who seeks ghosts might be interested. I shall post later this weekend.

J.S.