Isn’t it amazing how something you had forgotten creeps out of your consciousness after years and years have passed? It has happened to me several times, like the time a memory was triggered by a small wicker basket of fresh flowers sitting on top of a piano in a little country church.

The basket held deep purple iris and other blossoms of dark red and burnished orange. Dark green lacy fern hung out the sides. A strange feeling came over me almost the minute it caught my eye. I wondered why. At that moment, I could not put my finger on it nor could I keep my eyes or thoughts diverted from it. I did not feel fear, but it was not something pleasant either.

As I went through the motions of singing hymns along with the congregation, a picture slowly began to form like a butterfly unfolding its wings to take flight. I was starting to remember that it had something to do with when I was a five-year-old first grader beginning school in a suburb of a small West Florida town. That day, I was excited because my mother had finally consented to let me walk home from school with some children who lived in our neighborhood.

Within a block from the grammar school was a big, rambling house with peeling white paint. It sat tucked under a tall, healthy water oak tree. The massive branches spread shade over the yard where a sprinkling of flowers and small patches of grass struggled among tall weeds. Mostly, that yard was as sandy as a yard in West Florida can get through years of neglect. Obviously, the house had been unoccupied for a long time.

One of the older little girls leaned over to me. “That old house is haunted,” she whispered, and quickened her pace as we walked toward it. I thought of how my mother always discouraged the idea of anything being haunted. But there I was in a strange new world with older children who knew about that house. They passed it every day.

My heartbeat began to accelerate. I swallowed hard and tried to act brave as we walked closer and closer, but I was scared, especially when others said they heard noises sometimes when they walked by. Once past the house, we followed a path through a cemetery and then veered off on a shortcut toward our destination. As we moved through the cemetery, I noticed a grave with a wicker basket of fresh flowers of dark hue and lacy ferns on the mound of sandy soil. I had regained my senses when I saw the bouquet. My heartbeat slowed to normal.

I never told Mother and I never remembered the incident again until that little wicker basket on top of a piano turned a key in my subconscious.

Looking back, I find it strange that I found solace in a graveyard from my fear of a haunted house.

 

Nina Keenam is retired from the newspaper business. Her column appears on Saturdays.