Diane Melby
Salon for Creative Expression
On Spirits and the Afterlife
I lived at a distance from my mother during the last decade of her life. To close the gap we developed a wonderful tradition of talking for hours every Sunday. Three years after her death, I still spend the week collecting anecdotes to share in anticipation of our next chat. It is my sorrow that she has not visited me since she passed. This month’s Salon features a poem to my mother and an excerpt from Suzanne Shipley’s upcoming novel, “Unhappily ever Hereafter.” This funny and sweet story is set in the spirit world. I hope you enjoy both. Do you believe those you love stay in touch after they’ve passed? If so, share an experience. If not, why not?
After Leaving Her in the Soil of Our Hometown
I summon my mother in the shuffle of cards
see how aces would whisper through her hands
like the prayers we said before slipping off to sleep.
My mother’s shuffle was slick – her cards
mixed with quick flicks of her wrist.
I want to conjure her touch as I spread
the tarot before me but the cards tangle
like the cross she chained to my neck
when I was confirmed and found myself lost
in a white wash cleansing of rosary chants
adrift in the grievances of my youth.
Now I am as old as she was
when she let go of bitter regret
and I miss the song of her laughter
and the exuberance of her dance.
How I wish for the warmth of her kiss
and long to hear her voice
which I sought to find in the cards
but heard only heaven and earth collide
with the scream of my plane touching down.
Diane Melby
Originally published by The Ravens Perch, May 9, 2025.
To mark my mother’s ninetieth birthday and the renewal of her Texas driver’s license, I gave her a keyring shaped like an angel. Its message read, ‘Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.’ When she passed six years later, I attached my car keys to it as a reminder that she was still watching over me.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about the separation between the living and those who are no longer with us, about the veil between physical and ethereal beings. That veil can be heavy with cares, like a velvet curtain, or transparent from the push and pull of everyday life, like a shawl of loosely woven silk threads. No matter its substance, hands move behind the veil, reaching out to help. Ears press to listen; hearts pulse to comfort.