Cemetery Flowers (Saints & Haints, Chapter 22)

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Chapter 22
Cemetery Flowers

"I had been as far as one could go

and get back."

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"The Yellow Wallpaper"

By mid-September, I was feeling like I must've gone much farther than Charlotte's heroine ever ventured. I always liked that quote, though; and I thought about it a lot during that time. I was deeply depressed. I was beginning to feel that I couldn't imagine ever being happy again in this life; not really, not even for a single day.

The things I've been through, with demon attacks and attachments, are designed to ruin one's life. In September, I felt that they had been successful in that, in some ways, at least; even though everything would've seemed fine to other people on the surface. I was becoming very frustrated with other people, because I was becoming way too different from them. Most of the people I encountered on a daily basis acted as if having to use self-checkout was the worst thing that had ever happened to them; and it probably was. Random customers would say to me,
"Smile, already! Come on, it can't be that bad, can it?"
Or they'd seem pissed off that I was not the average airhead they expected, saying things like,
"You look bored,"
"You look like you hate your job,"
Or,
"Can't you talk?"
When they said things like that, I'd sometimes think responses which I never voiced, like,
"Maybe I would make stupid observations like that too, if there was nothing in my head! If I didn't even have two thoughts to rub together!"
Mostly, I just thought,
"If you only knew..."
I'd fake a smile, and hope I passed for the ditsy twit they were apparently judging me to be. My demons, whether or not they were mad at me at the time, always agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly. They'd respond to my thoughts with comments like,
"Yeah, no shit. You've got too many brains in your head to be dealing with that stuff right there."
Honestly, I think a lot of people escape having demons simply because demons can't stand to be around them either.

Whether at work or not, being around normal people was becoming intolerable; as bad as having bad demons. Most people cannot shut up. They vocalize every thought that enters their minds. They drivel on and on about nothing; about frivolous earthly concerns. It's something that has always bothered me; but as September wore on, I found forbearance increasingly difficult to maintain. I began to appreciate more than ever the degree of solitude I've enjoyed in this life, living alone in the countryside. I became more and more thankful that I do not, like many people, live in a household full of other people who never stop talking about things that don't even matter. That is why most people never learn anything; they never have a moment alone with their thoughts, or a moment of peace to allow their thoughts to develop.

Demons can have that effect too, of driveling on and on and distracting one from their own thoughts. In my case, however, I seemed to have gotten lucky; with demons who were comical and contemplative, and who had seemingly grown to like me. They no longer distracted me from important thoughts; instead they discussed them with me. As time had passed, they had become more benevolent; and I had become even less a part of this material existence. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we had become more like each other. Still, I felt that they shouldn't have been the only friends I had left, but they almost were. The few other psychic mediums I've met online, and Stephanie, of course, were the only people I could even imagine talking to anymore. My other friends had drifted away. It was my fault; I had ceased to nurture those friendships, but what was I supposed to say to them? All the things that were happening in my life were things they didn't know about, and would never have understood, even if I'd told them.

I could hardly believe or accept that this was what my life had come to. There I was, a person who had been tormented by demons, and had survived, sanity intact, to tell the story, and I was devoting the remnants of my life to telling that story-- for the benefit of people who hardly understood how to swipe a credit card, and whose primary concern was whether or not we had any decorative fucking kale. Men, as usual, pissed me off with their belittling flirtatious comments, but women almost pissed me off more. They were spending their husbands' money. Their fingernails were manicured. They wanted plastic bags for their stupid pots of flowers because they "didn't want any dirt to spill out in their cars." I viewed them with contempt. They'd never dug graves. They were still free to go flower shopping, as if life is good.

Mark 6:44, King James Version...

"But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house."

That feeling of hopelessness was amplified by the fact that most people in my personal life never seemed to believe me anyway. It seemed that they preferred to trust armchair demonologists, and Hollywood explanations of demons and possession --the teachings of people who had never experienced these things firsthand-- over the truthful testimony of someone they actually knew, who had. Demonic influence had prevented even my own parents from seeing the truth. They can tell you what's happening with all the reality stars, and on all the food snobbery shows, yet they had not even read my first book; despite the fact that I'm their only child, and despite my informing them that it is an autobiographical work, about one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Most of my other family members, the ones who knew about my situation and believed me, that is, still said things to me like,
"If you would just pray the blood of Jesus to protect you, that problem would go away. That's all you have to do."

In addition to those things, I also had to deal with being treated like a teenager or a drunk at work --by actual teenagers and drunks-- because I was frequently late. What was I supposed to tell them? That aside from staying up late at night trying to solve the mysteries of the universe, I was also frequently either awakened from my sleep, or else kept comatose, by spirit beings who were either trying to insert thoughts into my head or rummage through my memories? Somehow, I didn't think that would go over very well. I wondered if I would even accept a better opportunity, were one to come along; and if I did, would I even be successful? It wasn't my skills that were in question; the problem was that my former mantra (a quote from Ghandi),
"Wherever you go, go with all your heart,"
was something I just couldn't do anymore.
I couldn't see the sense in selling building materials, for example; when I knew that, of all the things we build here, only love will last. I had become acutely aware of the temporary nature of this phase of our existence. I was a weathered veteran; the fight no longer thrilled me. I wished only to get shot, so I could go on home. Laughter or tears were the only possible responses. In the latter part of September, I chose tears. Sometimes I was too sad to sleep.


I began to sense, once again, that I was having my attention drawn to certain memes on Instagram, and that they were messages from A. That hadn't happened in a while. First, I started seeing pictures of roses everywhere. Then I began to see pictures of roses of two different colors, such as one white and one red, in a vase together. When I saw those, I understood that they symbolized "one in spirit, one in the flesh." After that, I began to see images of one bi-colored rose; such as, a single rose with red and white petals. I understood those to mean, "We are one."  Next I was seeing images of wedding rings everywhere, and memes which read, "Marry me," or "Marry me already." Sometimes there would also be images of boats and heart-shaped bubbles, or other things that we'd used as symbols in the past, although roses and wedding rings were the resounding themes. There was one other recurring image, though. It was a painting of a sailboat, which featured a rounded entrance to a cave in the background. It reminded me of the imagery in the first vision from A. It had a caption which read, "You're going to the other side." 

On September 18, I suddenly had a burst of inspiration about how I could repair the fiction novel I'd left incomplete two years before. I'm referring to the paranormal romance novel I mentioned earlier; the one I had more recently concluded that A had "dreamed to me." Considering that it was written before I knew a lot of the things I know now, it would need a lot of revision to make it theologically truthful. I wouldn't want to propagate any view of the paranormal which isn't truthful, even within a work of fiction. The idea that came to me, which just might make the entire plot work, although it is a bit of an over-used scenario, was (in my own words),
"What if the hero of the story wasn't actually dead? What if he were, instead, frozen somewhere, in suspended animation? And what if the psychic messages the heroine received from him were actually sent from him while he was in that trapped, frozen state?"
I couldn't discern whether or not that idea, in concept form, had come from A; but it had come from someone, and I didn't know why anyone else would care about some old fiction story I'd decided to scrap.

On September 23, as I walked in to work, "Heaven" by Bryan Adams was playing, and as soon as I noticed it, there was that feeling, that it was a message. A bit later, a random customer handed me a $20.00 bill, as a tip, saying,
"I want to buy your dinner tonight."
I was surprised by the sweet gesture, but, I told him,
"I'm not supposed to take tips."
He simply replied,
"It's not from me, it's from..."
and then he pointed up.


On October 5th, I decided to visit A's grave. It's in a cemetery just outside of town. I had always known that, because I read his obituary; although I heard about his passing too late to attend his funeral. I probably should have visited there a lot sooner, but I had my reasons for not doing so. I did try to once; on Christmas Eve, in 2020. That was during the time when I first understood that a spirit was visiting me, and I suspected that it might be him, but I hadn't been able to confirm that yet. I'd thought it might be nice to place some flowers on his grave for Christmas. I didn't know what kind of flowers to choose, because I didn't know what he would like; so I'd ended up selecting a bouquet of red roses, because they're my favorite.

It's a rather large cemetery, and I walked its entirety that evening and never found his grave. At that time, I had been experimenting with a spirit communication app which I haven't written about previously. It is called "Ghost Hunting Tools," by developer "Weasel." This app has a database with a word list, and words appear on the screen at intervals whenever the app is running. The theory behind it is that spirits are able to manipulate it and choose which words display. I didn't write about it before, because I was never certain that it worked. It seemed, for the most part, to spit out random goobledegook; although, at times, it did produce some relevant results which left me wondering if they were merely coincidental. That evening at the cemetery was one of those times.

Frustrated, after walking around for a while, I had decided to try using it to see if I could get some assistance. I opened the app, and said to A,
"I can't find your grave. Will you help me?"
After a moment, the screen displayed,
"Shovel," and then, after another moment, "Don't forget me."
I remember thinking,
"That asshole."
I'd finally given up, and gone home disappointed. I wasn't much of a medium yet, but I had felt, while driving home, that he hadn't wanted me to find his grave. I had sensed that he didn't want me to think of him as dead; that he didn't want me to focus on remains in the ground, because he was alive and well, and not there. Therefore, I hadn't gone back to the cemetery.

In early October, however, I started thinking about visiting his gravesite again. It was weird, because by then I was psychic enough to know that it wasn't entirely my own idea. I sensed that someone was urging me to go there; but I didn't think that A would be doing that himself. I resisted for a few days; and then finally, I went. I found his grave that time. I noticed that he had no flowers, though; and again, the thought occurred to me that it would be nice to place some there.

It bothered me that he didn't have any flowers. Perhaps it wasn't really all that strange; after all, it had been years since he'd passed. Still, there was something odd about it, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It seemed that no one ever mentioned him anymore, either. There was an inkling of a thought that was gnawing at me, although it never completely formed at the time. It was something sort of like that feeling I'd had, during those 18 months before the vision on August 15th, that communicating with A was forbidden. It didn't make any sense, but it was there; sort of an illogical, general feeling of foreboding. It kind of felt like,
"You shouldn't be here. Walk away."
I decided to ignore it.

I placed the first-ever artificial flower arrangement that I'd made myself on A's grave, on October 29th. I had put the rings back on just a few days before that, too, because I had felt that I should. I'd asked A to let me know if that was what he wanted, although, at that time, I felt that we were primarily communicating through songs and memes, so I didn't know if he'd answer. When I was at his grave, however, I felt that he knew I was there. I sensed that he always knew what I was doing.

Since it seemed to be the only way we were communicating, I half-expected to find some kind of image, through which A would acknowledge the flowers, the next time I got online. As close as it was to Halloween, though, I didn't think I could consider images of graves to be oddly specific. On the 30th, however, there was one image that caught my eye. It was a painting of a tall, handsome man, in Victorian attire, carrying a blonde woman, who was wearing a white slip of a dress, out of a cemetery. It looked like the cover of a romance novel; like he'd just swept her up in his arms, and he was taking her out of there! The couple looked as though they were about to kiss. The cemetery gates behind them were very similar to the "gates of Heaven" in that first vision. As I looked at the picture, I perceived, as a thought-transference,
"Thank you."

As sweet as those less-direct forms of communication could be sometimes, I did wonder why I was not hearing from him in any other way. I was a bit pouty about it sometimes, like,
"No more videos?"
It sucked, because we couldn't do the tarot cards anymore either. It seemed that our options for communication kept dwindling. Whenever I felt that way though, I reminded myself of how fortunate I was to have had the communications I'd had. I'd literally had an hour-long "conversation" with him. Despite the fact that it had been in drawings, I knew how special and rare that had to be. I thought it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
"It's more than most people ever get," I told myself. It would have to be enough.