Aunt Emily’s return
Craig Brown, Stockford Village
Illustration by Marsha Matta/The Columbian
Let me say first I don’t believe in ghosts. I think.
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, my father’s aunt was considered the family clairvoyant. Try to surprise Aunt Emily for supper, and you’d find out she had already set an extra place for you. And my father was one of her favorites. No wonder we’d ended up with her antique bedroom set in our guest room.
The night she died, Dad was upstairs reading. The dog made a strange noise, and Dad looked up to see someone in a flowered nightgown walking down the hall. He figured it was my mother, and thought nothing more of it.
We got the call the next day. Aunt Emily had died the previous evening, about the time Dad saw the woman in the nightgown. Meanwhile, Mom found that someone had turned down the covers on Emily’s old bed. And no, she hadn’t come upstairs that night when the dog howled.
After Emily’s funeral, my father had a chance to ask her family: What was she wearing the night she died?
Funny you should ask: She was wearing her favorite flowered nightgown.
Craig Brown is metro editor for The Columbian.
