In the shadow of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Day School stood a graveyard. I had never dared to set my pretty foot in it. My maternal grandmother who was from the islands always coughed out tales of ‘jumbies’ –ghouls, demons, ghosts, and whatever other malevolent spirit you could think of. Along with these jumble stories came a long list of superstitions, and of course one of them was to always walk out of a cemetery backwards. Why you ask? Well because you wouldn’t want anything to follow you home, would you? Since I was a child —a young child I mean, I always avoided such places. I avoided death like the plague and all that came with it, no wakes, no funerals and certainly no cemeteries. But that was before the accident.

My mother’s death came as a shock to everyone but me – after all I was there. I’ll save you the gory details, but let’s just say she went out in a Cristal blaze of glory. We weren’t close but my father insisted I attend a service. They staged it at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the only how she could have loved it more was if it was an open closed casket.

It rained that day, it poured. I had to get rid of those mud caked black Manolo Blahniks right after. I stood under my father’s umbrella watching her settle into her new home six feet under with dry eyes. That was until a bolt of lightning struck the tree that we were under. Safe to say the funeral was over after that and of course I forgot to walk backwards out of the cemetery.

Every over priced therapists on the Upper East Side came to the same conclusion— grief. Grief for a mother who in my sixteen years never held me, never kissed me, never loved me. I see her in mirrors, I carry her around, I hear her voice in my head when I’m alone. So heed my warning — always walk backwards out of a cemetery, or something will follow you home.