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One winter's night, long after I left home, my mother was sitting alone in the kitchen, smoking and sipping her drink while reading her novel. The tv was on low so that she could hear the police radio plugged into her good ear. Mom was hard of hearing. Dad had gone to bed hours before, having had too much to drink - mom sipped - so she could drink longer. Because it was a school night, my little brother Timmy was already in bed, sound asleep.
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"I don't know if it was because I was reading a detective thriller or what, but shortly after midnight, I got the chills when I heard what sounded like Mary calling my name outside the kitchen window." Mom would begin. "So I turned the radio down, switched off the tv and sat there listening while I continued reading, thinking if someone is out there, they will call me again." (Try to imagine my Mom and Dad played by Katherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy)
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It was only a few moments after making herself another whiskey water that mom heard her name called again; beneath the tinkling of the ice in her glass she heard a woman's voice, "Betty!" Mom jumped to her feet and looked out through the window curtains, certain the woman next door had come over after seeing the light in the house. "Mary, is that you?" My mother called out as she made her way to the back door.
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She looked out, but no one was there... just the cold wind and blowing snow... newly fallen snow...
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Suddenly my mother noticed the delicate footprints, the size of a petite woman's slippers, making their way to the door - yet none going away. The scenario of the neighbor lady visiting late at night was so familiar to my mother that she had momentarily forgotten that Mary had died the previous year. Mary was dead - yet she called to her that night, and her little footprints remained in the snow as proof.
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"Isn't that right Kenny! It happened just like that!" Mom would always say to my Dad after telling the story. And Dad would always give a tenderhearted chuckle and gently say, "It sure did honey - Mary thought the world of you."
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Oh, and then my brother Timmy would say all excited - "Yeah - I saw it too - it was Mrs. R's ghost come to see Mom!"
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And Dad would always give another tenderhearted chuckle and gently say, "You sure did hon - Mary thought the world of your Mother." And then Mom would cry and start drying her tears with a dirty Kleenex while Dad fixed another round.
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After my Mom died, neither my Dad or Tim would admit they saw or heard anything that night but the tv and the police radio.
