flipflop_diva

She was five years old when her grandmother died.

She didn’t really understand it at the time. She woke up that morning to find her grandmother sitting in her favorite faded blue recliner, a glass of herbal tea in her hand, watching some news program on the television and loudly complaining about how much of a gossip the neighbor was. A little while later and a white ambulance with the sirens ringing loudly was taking her grandmother away, and her mom and her older siblings and her aunts were all in the kitchen, wailing and using up boxes of tissues.

She sat on the couch and watched the television, something she normally wasn’t allowed to do past breakfast, brushing the smooth blonde hair of her Barbie doll.

“Nana’s gone, Pippa,” her mother said sadly to her at one point, and Pippa just nodded. She knew that. She had seen the men in the black uniforms take her.

She returned her attention to the television. A car was chasing another car. She started to look away when the screen flickered.

The cars were gone. Now, on the television, was something much more familiar. Pippa stared as her grandmother smiled at her and waved.

“Mama!” Pippa called. “Mama! Nana’s on the TV!”

But by the time her mother returned to the living room, Nana was long gone, replaced again by the car chase.

“Oh, Pippa,” her mom said, ruffling her hair. “You’re such a imaginative little girl.” And she walked away, blowing her nose loudly.

Pippa glanced at the TV, made sure it was just cars and returned to playing with her Barbie.

•••

She was fourteen years old when her best friend in all the world, Nicole, died.

Nicole had spent the night with Pippa, and they had eaten a huge stack of pancakes for breakfast, giggling together as they discussed their friend Shelby and the super huge crush she had on the new boy at school, Jason.

Nicole’s mom had picked her up, parking their white dented minivan in the driveway and honking the horn three times to get their attention.

“Thanks for having her over!” Nicole’s mom had shouted out the window at Pippa’s mom, who had come out on to the front porch with her daughter to say goodbye.

“Any time!” Pippa’s mom shouted back, as Nicole slipped into the passenger side of the van.

There was never another time. Nicole never made it home. Their dented white van was hit head-on by a drunk driver a block from their house. There was nothing anyone could do to save Nicole or her mother.

Pippa sat on the couch that night, in the dark, her mind in a daze. She couldn’t quite comprehend that she would never see her best friend again, never talk to her, never get to tell her secrets. Who would she giggle with? Or pass notes to?

The tears were blurring her vision, obscuring the judge on the television who was shouting at some people in her courtroom. She went to wipe them away and froze.

The judge on the television was gone. Instead, she saw Nicole. Her precious, beautiful Nicole, looking like an angel.

Pippa stared. Nicole smiled and mouthed something that looked like “I love you!”. Pippa closed her eyes, just for a second, but when she opened them again, Nicole was gone. The judge was back.

Pippa thought maybe she was crazy.

•••

She wasn’t crazy. At least she didn’t think so. Because it kept happening.

Her mother when she was nineteen years old. Her uncle when she was twenty-three. A co-worker who passed away from cancer when she was twenty-seven. A neighborhood boy who fell out of a tree and struck his head on a rock when she was thirty-five.

Each one, appearing to her through the television, sometimes just to wave and smile, and let her know they were okay. Some with a message, like when her mother told her to check behind the bed and she found an envelope with $5,000 in cash.

She was almost eighty years old before she finally told someone. She was sitting in her favorite faded blue recliner, drinking a cup of herbal tea, watching two political commentators argue over the day’s news. Her two granddaughters were beside her.

“When people die,” she said, “they come to me through the television to say goodbye.”

“You’re silly, Nana,” said three-year-old Maggie.

Seven-year-old Becky didn’t say anything, just turned the page of her book, but Pippa could see on her face the exact same expression her mother — Pippa’s daughter — often wore when people would whisper to her to ask if Pippa was crazy, as if Pippa couldn’t hear them talking from two feet away.

“You’ll see,” Pippa told the girls.

This time she saw Becky roll her eyes.

•••

“Mama!” Five-year-old Maggie called. “Mama! I see Nana on the TV!”

Thank you for reading! This was written for Week 4 of the