When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [53]
The woman admitted that she had gone to three different funeral homes before finding one that would accommodate her unusual request.
“But why?” I asked again. “Why is he standing up?”
The woman explained that her husband had been sick for some time and that in the final months of his illness he had said over and over again that he absolutely did not want a big fuss. No viewing, no big ceremony, no procession to the cemetery. He also told her that he didn’t really trust her to follow his last wishes. He knew that ultimately she was going to be alive and he wasn’t, and there was always the chance she’d do what she wanted anyway.
I still wasn’t sure what was going on. But before I could ask her to be more specific, my attention was drawn to the ghost, who had circled back around the room and was standing near the casket. As I made my way toward him, I noticed that he was grinning from ear to ear. There was no doubt in my mind that the whole situation was making him very happy.
I glanced from the casket to the man and said, “Okay, this has me stumped. I hope you have some explanation.”
His grin cracked into a laugh. He was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t even seem surprised that I could see him.
“She never fails to amaze me,” he said, nodding in the direction of his wife. “We’ve been married thirty-six years and I really thought that all those years she wasn’t listening to me. But I guess she was.”
At this point the suspense was killing me. “So what, exactly, did you tell her that your body ended up like this?” I asked.
“I told her that when I died, I didn’t want to be laid out in a funeral parlor,” he said, starting to giggle again.
“Okay,” I said and waited for him to continue.
“That’s it,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Sure,” I said. “You said you didn’t want to be laid out—”
“You get it?” he interrupted.
I got it, all right. By now his widow had joined me in front of the casket.
“Did he tell you?” she asked. “Is it okay with him?”
I told him that her husband was more than okay with it; he was downright tickled pink. Not just because she had kept him from being laid out, but because after all those years, he realized that she really had listened to him.
There’s One Last Thing I Need to Say
Sometimes the living feel they have something they need to tell the departed. This is usually some type of apology for bad behavior that occurred while their loved one was still alive. In this case, I don’t always have to go to the funeral. I simply tell the worried mourners that when they get up to the casket, they should just whisper their apologies there. The ghost will be standing nearby and will hear them. I remind them that it’s not enough to just think a sincere apology. Unless Aunt Florence was a mind reader when she was alive, she won’t be able to tell what you are thinking just because she is now a ghost. For some people, this isn’t enough. They want me to come to the funeral home to let them know if their apology has been accepted. I’ve learned to be very careful what I tell the living in these cases—I sometimes have to take into account what the ghost’s motive might be in passing along certain information. I must try to understand as much as I can about both sides of any story before I share anything that could be hurtful to those who receive it.
I once was called to the funeral of a teenage girl who had been tragically killed in a car accident. Her parents wanted me to see if she could tell them anything about what had happened. She had been riding in the car with her boyfriend at the time, and although he had survived the accident he hadn’t been able to give the parents much information at all.
When I got to the funeral home, I found a devastated family, a boyfriend clearly still in shock, and one extremely angry and vindictive teenage ghost. She was standing up by her casket, muttering about how her mother liked her to wear her hair pulled back but how she hated it that way and why did her mother get the final say? I tried a soft approach. “Maybe your mom wasn