Haunted Objects

I never gave much thought to the inanimate things that hold stories for me.  Today, I have reason to think about them.  My question to myself is this, “When I die which objects have I touched so deeply that they will echoe me?”

Will it be the curling iron that I have used almost every day for the past twenty years to put the bend in the fringes of hair that make up my bangs? My department store bargain still gets surprisingly hot.  I burned myself with it today for the millionth time.  Is my curling iron heavy with my essence, my pain, and my vanity?

Maybe my spirit will have marked the couch where I sat with the vet who put my old cat to sleep.  I sat there and watched her inject the poison that ended my dear friend’s life, and I cried.  Did those tears imbue the fabric with something of me that will make those who sit on it feel extreme sadness and overwhelming guilt? 

Have I left my imprint on so many things like ghostly germs waiting for a susceptible medium to infect?  Will my clothes, my journals, my walls and flooring, or my reading glasses be the most potent speaker of my death?

The event that led me down this road of morbid reflection was simple, an innocent action on my part.  I took a steak knife from the silverware drawer in the kitchen.  I was going to use it to cut through the plastic on a new package of Smart Dogs. 

The sick feeling of dark shame that washed over me when I picked up that small tool, stopped me cold.

I picked it up, and I just knew you had done something bad with it.

The car accident that killed you last year, left me alone here in our place.  I haven’t had the heart to check your computer or go through your things because you were always so very private.  Maybe I’ve always known that I didn’t want to know everything about the you that you kept from me.  Now, I have to find out.

What did you do with this ordinary object that made it into a harbinger of evil after your death?  Why did you keep it?

What did you do?

Why is this steak knife haunted? 

Why do I still miss you so much?

Is that your voice I hear?

I should really put this thing down.