One (more) and done.

Let me jump in one last time.

First off I had no plans for one more. Our heroine passed peacefully. She waited for ham, cheese, and I to leave the room. Her brother Chris was there at the final moments. I’ll never be able to thank him enough for that. There’s a lot about the moments I’ll keep to ourselves. While we shared a lot, that’s something I don’t have the words or thoughts right now. So…..

Quick backstory, Elizabeth used to love ghost hunters, ghost adventures, ghosts in cars getting coffee, all that. The celebrity mediums, the noncelebrity mediums. She loved it. As did I because I made fun of it the whole time. Ghosts were complete nonsense. How in the world could any sane, reasonable person believe in ghosts.

Fast forward to the roadtrip. Ham, cheese and I split for Clearwater beach just to get out of town. A change of venue. Relax and generally get a breath. So we wake up the first morning. When I say we, I mean me because teenagers wake up at the crack of noon. So I stumble out for a cup of crappy hotel brew. There’s some old guys (80+) celebrating a birthday with a bottle of Jameson. (I wanted to party with those guys but I would’ve brought their cool quotient down a notch). I noticed Taylor Swift’s “shake it off” playing. Our buddy Wayne and Elizabeth were drunk as rats dancing in front of the Hard Rock in Vegas to this song and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. Ok. Mild coincidence. We then set out to grab a t-shirt and other nonsense from the trip. We’re in a surf store. We hear Fergie from the black eyed peas. Hannah taps me, we used to hear this every day going to school, what are the odds we hear it at a surf store.

Yeah, what are the odds

So we are now about to leave to go see my uncle Richard and aunt Terri and Jenna. While waiting for the valet another song is blasting through the hallway speakers. Some Amy Grant song. Don’t ask me the name cause that ain’t quite my genre. Nonetheless, Amy f’n Grant? She loved Amy Grant. I sat through a Christmas concert of Amy Grant and would gladly do it again but still….

This was getting weird, even ham and cheese though as much.

So we start to driving. Years ago a commercial came on the tv at a restaurant with songs of the 70’s. Olivia Newton John came on and Elizabeth started singing this song that I thought she made up, “have you ever been mellow”. We get in the truck. We change the station and what comes on, right from the start….

If you guessed “master of puppets” you’re wrong.

Seriously? ONJ? Have you ever been mellow? ArWe all screamed “seriously!!!!” Are you f’n kidding? I looked up. “Well played ma’am”. Hannah then hit a button. Turned it off. We turned it right back…..

The song was gone.

This was not pandora, nor Spotify. Sirius XM is on a stream. Why did it disappear? What the blue hell is going on. We all felt something. Hay was shocked. Hannah immediately started sobbing. I smiled a huge smile because she’s still here in some way watching us.

I’m sure she laughed. Thank god we have someone watching over us with skin in the game.

At the end of her remembrance from me the other day I said something a buddy of mine texted to me right after she passed. I think about it a lot as the past few days I really feel she’s still with us. With all of us. So look, in the end I truly love all of you. And the three of us will be fine in the end. I’ll keep writing. Maybe I’ll start a new one about a dad trying to raise two lunatic daughters. Complete fiction but I’ll come up with something I’m sure. Thanks for the following.

Someday you will read or hear that Elizabeth Reeves is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. She shall be more alive than I am now. She will just have changed her address. She will have gone into the presence of God.