I was still in the early, irrational cars for sale phases of grief; I had the urge to buy flowers in

I flew to Paris a few months after my mother s death to teach at the American University. While I d looked forward to the trip, once I arrived I was disoriented. The airline lost my luggage. cars for sale I had to teach my first class in the clothes I d just flown over in and I didn t have the books I needed for my lesson cars for sale plans. Each morning on my walk down the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet to the metro station I passed shops selling tombstones and memorial plaques, stalls that sold flowers both real and plastic. My apartment was across from Montparnasse, the famous cemetery that holds Paris s artistic elite. cars for sale After my class was over, I walked past Baudelaire s moss-covered stone likeness cars for sale and Sartre and de Beauvoir s tombstone, which was dotted with red lipstick kisses from adoring admirers.
I was still in the early, irrational cars for sale phases of grief; I had the urge to buy flowers in honour of my mother and set them on a random grave. I bought white roses, walked stone to stone reading the inscriptions. None seemed right. My gesture was more about my own need for my mother to be a more sophisticated person than a tribute to the person she d been. Also, I was still confused about the whereabouts of her soul. The question, simple, childish, but real Where is she now ? was one I struggled with. There was something about the chalky belle époque buildings that made me feel they were constructed not of stone, but spirit. Once your material form was destroyed, who knew what travelling a soul might do? Maybe all spirits flew to Paris, not only French ones. Could you haunt a place you d never been?
I was comforted by the thought that my mother s essence might have been joined in some fundamental way to beautiful Paris. I also had a darker sensation. Whenever my mind was at rest, in the cracks between thoughts, I saw my mother lying dead on her living room floor. The police had found her after a neighbour noticed her newspapers piling up. I d lived with this image for months but it was in Paris that I felt my body could no longer hold so much sadness. My darker self split off and followed, just behind me, as I walked in the Luxembourg Gardens, sat in the cafe drinking wine, walked through Notre Dame past the reliquary that held a fragment of the One True Cross.
It was not a completely unusual sensation for me. I d been afraid much of my life. What was new was that the presence was closer and more familiar. Had my mother risen up from her spot on the floor to follow me? Or was my dark double tracking me? Were the two entities the same? All I know was that in Paris I felt haunted, like a double exposure photograph that shows a figure and then a milky specter behind. I felt stalked by a creature cars for sale of my own making, a monster that was both my mother and myself.
Since I was a little girl I ve been afraid of monsters. cars for sale I d put garlic on my window ledge to ward off vampires and sage in the corners to protect me from zombies. Even as a young adult I lay on my ratty futon surrounded by library books terrified someone or something would break into my apartment. After my daughter was born, my fear escalated. I d check the front door several times a day to make sure the deadbolt was secure and the chain latched. At night I lay in the dark, my mind sending out waves of panic.
One night I was up so late with my daughter, who was teething, that my heart began to pound hard. My skin felt hot even as cold sweat came up and soaked my nightgown. I was pulled into the fantasy and carried along: My front door swung wide. In the dim light I could see a figure moving down the hallway, lumbering over the floor. The revelation was horrible but also holy.
My cars for sale mother stood before me in her quilted bathrobe, dark hair held back in a ponytail, her eyes sunken, grey. I felt like the narrator of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein , who, startled out of sleep, opens his eyes to behold the monster reaching out to him: the miserable monster . . . held up the curtain of the bed and his eyes . . . were fixed on me. His jaw opened and he muttered some inarticulate sound while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. Dr Frankenstein s horror is intensified by intimacy, by the bond and expectations between cars for sale parent and child.
When an object of anxiety, a monster, comes too close the by-product is always horror. A monster, as Timothy Beal writes in his book Religion and Its Monsters , exemplifies the outside that has gotten inside, the beyond the pale that, much to our horror, has gotten into that pale. A mother represents home, security, safety, warmth, love, nurturance and protection. Monsters are destroyers of home. They bring chaos and disruption.
My mother was both mother and monster. cars for sale She was in many ways a conscientious parent. She read books on child rearing, set healthy diets, enforced regular bedtimes and took us to cultural events. She wanted to offer security but her misery foreclosed any possibility of us feeling safe. She promised love but her