Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Next Avenue on Oct. 31, 2024.
Last October, Brynne showed me an advertisement for a psychic fair. I arched a quizzical eyebrow, in jest to her kookiness.
“I have something to work through,” she said, shrugging.
“I’ll wait in the car,” I said, anticipating time alone to work through my own angst.
“Today’s the second anniversary of your mom’s death,” she said in the parking lot at her psychic fair. Brynne, always the mind reader, finally addressed the elephant in the room – well, in the Corolla. The approaching anniversary gnawed, numbed – and now it was here.
That first year after her death, I wrote about my loss, conjuring my shattered, scattered orphan thoughts onto ghostly laptop glow, as if my fingertips piggybacked a planchette at a Ouija board. Often, my aimless, keyboard finger taps were as futile as failed SOS Morse code.
“I’ll still write about you,” I promised Mom throughout her five-year sentence on cancer’s death row. She smiled. My last words to her: “You were a great mom. It’s OK to let go.” She was lost to merciful morphine then, mouth agape (a near-death mask).
With written words, I tried to crawl from, and claw my way out of, the surrealism of an emotional ground zero. Also, as promised to her, I called Dad, checking on him like clockwork. Mom worried more about him than herself. “Me and Jesus, we’re good,” she said, “like in that Tom T. Hall song.” We had never talked Jesus before … much like we never spoke of her cigarettes either, those telltale smoke signals from the far corner of our house, smoke rings floating like ghostly nicotine nooses, from where she attempted to hide her habit, as if saving an impressionable son in his single-digit years from secondhand smoke or bitter disappointment. It was deception with mercy.
Photo provided by Scott Saalman
The next year, my mom stories stopped, cold turkey. Done with Mom. Dialing Dad lessened. When people asked how he was, I’d respond, “He’s fine,” based on our two-minute talks. How Dad really felt the other 1,438 minutes of the day, I couldn’t imagine. Both broken promises made at Mom’s deathbed came with great guilt.
Brynne convinced me to join the psychic fair. I autographed a sign-up sheet and scribbled my name on a sticker. In the community room, wobbly card tables spaced a few feet apart served as makeshift spiritualist stations. I had expected a private room, not a setting more suited for bingo. With so many people in the same room contacting the spirit world, how could otherworldly wires not cross? The risk seemed high for spirits to show up at wrong tables. I imagined the following screwball scenario between a medium and client:
“Your Uncle Ed’s spirit is here.”
“I don’t have a dead Uncle Ed. I’m here for Sparky, my childhood cocker spaniel.”
“Uncle Ed, you might want to try table B-5.”
“Bingo,” someone a few tables away shouts upon hearing B-5.
“I hear Sparky barking from the other side of the room. Mommy’s coming, Sparky …”
My assigned medium read SCOTT on the sign-up sheet and on my name tag. Still, she asked, “Are you Scott?” as if disbelieving in things that can actually be seen. That, or my medium wasn’t playing with a full Tarot deck, lessening my already low expectations and further fueling my doubts.
“Why are you here?”
“To contact my mom, I guess.”
“What’s her name?”
“Pat. Patty. Patsy. Patricia,” I said.
“I’ll see if I can reach her.”
“Tell her I’m calling collect,” I joked. No laugh. A jest-free zone. Tough room.
“Pat. Patty. Patsy. Patricia,” the medium said, her eyes blinking like dying neon, then saying closed. “Someone is here to talk …”
“Scott,” I reminded, tapping the name tag.
Her concentration while summoning the otherworld was Oscar worthy.
“Your mom has been very busy bringing people together,” the medium said.
Suddenly, my BS detector’s needle stilled. My heart quickened. It was believable, what she reported. Mom, always the consummate host, was passionate about introducing people to one another, no matter where, forging new connections and friendships. Strangers were a foreign concept. Mom’s magnum opus was the miraculous arrangement of a baby’s adoption between two families whose only common denominator was the shared blessing of knowing her.
The shut-eyed medium smiled and said, “She wants you to know she’s doing fine.”
My tears welled, leaked and burned like lava, unleashing—
“Ask her …”
—salty torrents, their fiery flow—
“Ask … her …”
—so many tears so close to home—
“Are you still there, Pat. Patty. Patsy. Patricia?”
—syllabic sputter … “Ask her if Dad is doing OK?”
“Scott wants to know how your husband is doing.” The medium blindly leaned forward. Had there been a crystal ball between us, her nose would’ve knocked it to the floor. The cheap table shook – or maybe it was me.
“When did he die?” the medium whispered. I assumed she was asking me. Hard to tell. Her eyes still closed.
“He didn’t.”
Her right eye popped open. The sudden gypsy-like intensity of her cyclopean stare startled me. Calmly, she said, “Why don’t you call your Dad and find out how he’s doing?”
Photo provided by Scott Saalman
Was Mom speaking through the medium, or was the medium, alone, offering me practical advice? Her other eye opened to glance at her cell phone. “Your time’s up.” She hawked a special rate if I wanted to extend the conversation with Mom.
The good cry at the psychic fair made me feel better. It lightened me, enlightened me somehow. My first parapsychologist visit brought with it a newfound clarity one might expect from couch surfing through a sea of psychologist offices. Sometimes, tears are the best form of talking.
Her app accepted my debit card. My tip for the medium was large.
Later, I called Dad. Told him Mom was staying busy bringing others together, that she was doing fine. That sounds like her, he said. I didn’t ask how he was doing. He was alive. It’s so hard to talk about love with the living.
Email Scott at scottsaalman@gmail.com.