When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [54]
She whipped around and glared at me. “Yeah, well, what good is it being upset?” she said sullenly. “Besides, it’s not like it was my fault I died. It was his.” She pointed across the room at the grief-stricken boyfriend.
This was a pretty serious accusation, so I asked her for some more details. She went on and on, describing wild partying and irresponsible driving and illegal substances. According to her, it was her boyfriend who ought to be dead and she who should be sitting in the room full of mourners. “You tell them all that it’s his fault that I’m dead,” she demanded. “Tell them he killed me.”
This is the kind of situation I hate: when I’m given information that I can’t confirm and that might be harmful to the living people I share it with. The parents had asked me to see if I could learn anything more about their daughter’s death. And now I had some very incriminating information indeed.
In this particular case, however, I was lucky. The town where the funeral was being held was one where I had done some work for a few of the local police officers. One of those officers had stopped by to pay his respects to the family, and I caught up with him outside the room where everyone was gathered. I told him he didn’t have to give me all the details—I just wondered if there had been a toxicology report on the boyfriend.
The cop responded that the kid’s blood work had come back clean. That, as far as anyone could tell, the girl had died because she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, even though the driver was wearing his. He said that he was as sure as he could be that it was nothing more than a tragic accident. Suddenly, the ghost burst out into the hallway, clearly in search of me.
“You have to come in here and see what’s going on,” she said.
I followed her back into the room, and she pointed out her boyfriend, sitting and talking to several girls, probably her classmates. One of the girls reached over and patted the boy’s hand as he fought back tears.
“You see,” she fumed. “He’ll have a new girlfriend in a few days. He’ll forget about me, instead of remembering me forever.” She abruptly changed gears. “Were you telling the cops what I told you?”
I had a flash of insight into her sad attempt at making her boyfriend suffer and suspected that maybe her information wasn’t 100 percent true. I told her that I was going to check out everything she’d told me; if it were indeed true, I’d tell her parents. But since I suspected she was on a vendetta and might be the type to stay around and try to create more drama for the poor driver, I added that if she wanted her boyfriend to remember her forever, she’d go into the Light so that she could visit him in his dreams.
Well, someone must have told her boyfriend who I was—because just as I was leaving, he asked if it was true that I had talked to his girlfriend. “She’s here,” I told him.
“Could you tell her something from me?” he asked. “Could you tell her that I’m so sorry that I didn’t stop the car and make her put her seat belt on? She could be a drama queen and I didn’t want to have a fight, so I didn’t make her do it.”
He was so stricken that I couldn’t help myself from trying to comfort him. I told him that the police knew it was an accident; his girlfriend would have a chance to move on, and so should he. I could only hope that they both would take my advice.
Other times ghosts are the ones who have last regrets or something they need to say before they can be at peace. Of course, I don’t really know how many spirits feel this way; it’s not as if ghosts ask me to attend their funerals to pass along specific messages. Generally, spirits who feel that strongly about making something right are the ones who tend not to cross over. Still, there have been times when I end up feeling I’ve brought more comfort to the ghost than to the living people who called me.
An older woman had passed away after many years of ill health. Her daughters, who invited me to the funeral home, remarked upon how their mother