The Ghost in the Elevator

As a child, I had several peculiar fears. I disliked carousels or anything that could make me dizzy, and, despite having perfected the art when I was very small, I abandoned the practice of somersaults for fear I would break my neck. One of my more outwardly notable concerns, though, was my fear of elevators. I couldn’t tell you when or exactly why it began, but I spent many family trips to the mall begging my family to take the escalator instead. If I did have to get in an elevator, I would grip the metal railings at the side in terror.

Needless to say, I eventually grew out of it. On that day when I was twelve years old, I knew that a typical elevator ride didn’t present any danger to me or anyone else, but when I stepped onto it alongside my family, I wondered if some fear remained. I felt unease, after all, but I also felt unease at home, in my bed, in restaurants, in church. Maybe I was afraid so often that I couldn’t pinpoint what things caused it anymore.

I looked around the small, wood-paneled box my family stood in and quickly did a head count as the doors closed, making sure everyone was there, as though it were my responsibility to herd them. My father. My brother. My grandparents. My aunt. Me.

I looked around again, feeling like I had miscounted. My father. My brother. My grandparents. My aunt. Me. That was definitely everyone, but I felt as though we had collectively forgotten someone or something, like someone else was there who was escaping my notice. It felt like there was a ghost in the elevator.

Then I realized it – someone was missing, and we had lost someone. My mother wasn’t there.

But of course she wasn’t there. She was the reason we were in the elevator to begin with, to go to the fifth floor of the hospital to see her.

The doors opened, and I cursed this instinct I had to count up my family, to herd them like a farm dog. I slowed the usually quick pace of my short legs to a foot-dragging shuffle; I was in no hurry to make it to my mother’s room. When I did, the view was exactly the same as it had been every other time I’d been here, but no less disturbing. Looking at my mother unconscious in a hospital bed, all manner of monitors attached to her, felt deeply wrong. It wasn’t anything a twelve year old girl was ready to see, even after a dozen times.

I sat by the window, trying to stay as far away from her bed as I could, my mind spinning like a power saw. My family talked to each other, for the most part acting like everything was fine, like we were anywhere else but a hospital room, but I didn’t say anything – I wasn’t as good at playing pretend. I didn’t really say much anymore, anyway, and I think they had all gotten used to it. There was too much going on in my mind for anything to come out of my mouth.

Not long after that day, my mother was transferred to a nursing home. It felt less dire, less urgent than the hospital did, less like a catastrophe could turn your life upside down (again) at any moment. But it was still awful. For one, it smelled. It was filled with old men and women and nurses who didn’t care enough about them to remind them what their names were. But the worst thing was how unfair it felt. Anyone else entering the building at my age was visiting a grandparent, maybe an aunt or uncle. Certainly not a mother. Mothers weren’t supposed to have strokes.

Privately, I often wondered why I bothered coming to see her at all. When she had finally woken up from her coma, I had thought my world was beginning again, that it was the start of everything getting better, but it turned out to be an insignificant development. My mother could not eat, speak, or even sit up, and although some therapies were attempted, it became clear that it would always be that way. Since she didn’t react to anything, let alone my presence, my visits felt horribly pointless, serving only to depress me further. But I went, out of a feeling of guilt and responsibility. She was, after all, technically alive.

As time went on, I grew more bitter about visits. If she wasn’t able to act like a mother, I didn’t see what the point was to acting like a daughter. Resentment began to replace my sadness as I honed in on all my negative memories of her, and as I aged, I pretended none of what had happened bothered me anymore; I had already been far too burdensome to everyone around me when the grief was fresh.

For the most part, it worked. But every time I would board an elevator, it was the same old story. Years later, I would still count up my companions and invariably come up one short, and the part of me that was trapped as a scared twelve year old girl would come to the surface once again. I would think of all the things I’d had to figure out alone already – how I snuck away to Kohl’s to buy a bra with my own money because I was too embarrassed to tell my dad – and all the things I would do without her guidance. I would start a career, get married, and have children, without a mother.

My mother died about a month ago, six years after her stroke. Seeing her finally escape her body was cause for celebration; no recovery whatsoever had been made in those six years.

I am happy she is free, and relieved that no one who loved her will ever need to worry about her again; but I know that for the rest of my life, when I step onto an elevator, there will always be a ghost.


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