A Kept Promise (Nonfiction)

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She always said she’d haunt me after she died. Funnily enough, her celebration of life hadn’t even happened yet when she began. I guess she just couldn’t wait anymore. Three days: that’s how long it was before she started knocking on the walls.

Our older brother had come from Tennessee for her funeral. He was the one to speak up first. He asked Dad and me if it was us who’d been knocking. “No,” we both responded, and I laughed my head off, knowing that it was simply Rachel, keeping her promise.

I’d known for ages that Rachel would haunt me after her death. I thought it’d be a few decades down the line, after we’d been a pair of siblings wreaking havoc in the nursing home. She passed much earlier than that, though, from MELAS, a rare genetic disorder. So rare that most medical professionals didn’t know much about it. Mom had passed in her sleep sixteen years prior from a brain stem stroke and heart attack. Her death made more sense after Rachel’s; they both had the same disorder. They both passed in their sleep.

Rachel came to me in my dreams to let me know she was okay. I’d watched more than a few paranormal shows to know a voice recorder would yield some responses, so I bought one in hopes of hearing her and asked random questions. Sometimes she answered. In stores or on the radio, songs came on that meant something to the two of us. She did other things that got on my nerves to see how I’d react, like the knocking. And opening doors. Messing with the coffee maker. She did little things that let me know she was still around, still with me, just in a different way. It was an unconventional closeness, which was so like her.

It’s been a little over seven years since her death. Rachel continues to keep her promise. She’s still in my life, still getting on my nerves. She’s my little sister, after all. Death won’t stop that.

Asher Bomse is a trans man living with disabilities. He’s seen far more death than most he’s met. He began writing about it in various ways. To help himself through his unbearable grief. To be a light in the darkness for others while at it. To show others they’re not alone in their grief.