When people say they’re haunted you automatically think of awfulness. Sadness and misery, ghosts and ghouls, things being thrown across the room. I don’t think it always means that. There’s a different kind of haunted, the kind of haunting where there’s a sudden warm feeling, the feeling that there’s someone stood behind you, ready to catch you if you fall. The soft hand on your shoulder when you need to find strength and when the air feels thick in your hand, like your holding the hand of the universe. There’s the haunting when someone’s in your mind all the time, and their name pops up everywhere, but it doesn’t feel like a threat. More like a reminder that you are loved, that you are not alone. Someone believes in you.

I feel like this often, and yet I scream in my head to the universe why he was taken away. Maybe he was taken so actually, I’ll always have him, in a different way.

I work with dementia patients who do not recognize the faces of their children in photos and who don’t remember their religious beliefs or the work they spent their entire lives on. This scares me more than anything. I take this fear out on my camera, and batter it with memories. It makes me sad looking back, but I’d rather feel something than nothing at all. Sometimes sadness justifies how wonderful something once was.

I will hold him in my hand forever. His tragedy does not weigh me down. His presence lifts me up and helps me to fly. And one day, when I see him again, I will really fly with him. We will glide forever and sleep on clouds, visit more old friends I’m sure will join us up there at some point. I will hold his hand in a way where I will be able to see it again and not just feel it and I will rest my head in his hair. I will never take him for granted, for I will always remember how much it hurt last time I had to say my goodbyes.

I will march through those pearly gates longingly, after one last look behind, and I will straight away look for his ginger hair amongst the crowd. Perhaps he would have heard I was on my way and would be waiting on the corner for me. We will not say a word. I will hold him and breathe in his smell, and realize it’s exactly how I remembered. I’ll squeeze him so hard he laughs and squeals. We will sit on the lowest cloud and blow kisses to those that still have their parts to play. We will make it snow one more time, and in the night I will blow my final storm into the world. I will make tree’s move and give the world one final reminder I was here, and then it will be my turn to sit and wait for the others. But I will have him.

We will not reminisce too much. We both know. I have played it all out a thousand times in my head and seeing him makes it all seem so real again I needn’t talk about it to bring it to life. We will make more memories and send letters in the form of dreams to our loved ones about our adventures, to let them know that we’re okay.

 We won’t talk much as we know there is not too much to say. I will sit and start to tell him everything. I will stumble over my words, and he will whisper to me what I already know. He will tell me he never left me in the first place, and though some days he appeared to be hiding, he was right behind every time.