The next morning it all feels like a dream, but it’s not something I can dismiss. My mind is distracted, running through those brief moments.

Part of me expects Eleanor to say something during breakfast.

I quiz her on her dreams, but there’s nothing that jumps out; nothing about seeing a vision of her mother hovering above her bed. Eleanor says she had a bad dream about someone taking her pink purse, which is nothing out of the ordinary for her.

As I wander distracted through the menial breakfast clean-up chores, Eleanor interrupts me for a game of hide-and-go-seek. I oblige, covering my eyes as she, round after round, hides quite obviously in very visible places.

There will be a point in her life, probably once she’s in middle school, where Eleanor will start hearing stories about how her parents were too soft, and created within her an attitude of entitlement and constant positive reinforcement. But it’s true, especially with this game.

I tip-toe through the house, pondering loudly, “Where’s Eleanor? Is she hiding in the curtains?” She’s not, she’s underneath the kitchen table.

“Is she hiding upstairs?” Instead of going up the stairs, I sit on the steps, pulling out my phone quickly, scanning through emails of hamburger coupons and e-book discounts as I do my best impression of someone stomping around.

“Where could she be?” I say exasperated after sliding my phone back into my pocket, hiding the evidence of my disconnectedness.

Eleanor pops out with a “Here I am!”

Then we start over.

With hands covering my eyes, I count. I hear the familiar thumping as she uses her hands and feet to clamber up the stairs. When I reach 20, I uncover my eyes and begin the search. I spend some time searching the main floor as I browse a news site for updates on the horribleness of the world. Heading towards the stairs, I hear a giggle behind me. Looking around our playroom, I see feet sticking out from underneath an armchair. I spend some time looking in our coat closet and behind some more curtains before asking, “Are you behind this chair?” She squeals as she’s found and I laugh. Squealing, Eleanor pushes out from behind the chair, running off towards the kitchen and I follow her.

“Mama!” she shouts.

Eleanor pushes open the sliding glass door and runs out onto our porch. She’s looking down into the yard, but before I can see what has captured her attention, I hear “Daddy! I’m upstairs!”

I look towards the stairs, but when I look back through the open door, the Eleanor on the porch is gone.

Besides experiencing the death of a loved one, there isn’t anything else more mentally shattering than seeing something or someone where it doesn’t belong. I’ve had experiences in the past where I’ve opened the front entry door on a dark night and have seen myself reflected in the glass of the storm door. When it happened, it didn’t immediately register that I was there. My heart jumps and I think that someone is standing outside my house, but then within a matter of milliseconds, my brain catches up and logic provides the answer.

In this circumstance there isn’t a readily available explanation. Last night I justified the vision as stress-related and due to a lack of sleep.

Today was different though. It reminded me of the lost time after the funeral when I took Eleanor to the playground. But it wasn’t something that was easily explainable as a ghost, either. Sure, if I was seeing Veronica by herself, it would make sense—if you believed in ghosts—but why would I also see a very-much-alive Eleanor?

I turn around as I hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

It’s Eleanor, arms folded, looking very cross with me. “I don’t want to play this game anymore,” she says, huffing into the playroom and picking up a doll to play with.

The town where I went to college was considered one of the most haunted towns in America. Freshman year there were girls telling stories of ghost babies crying in their closets or in shutdown elevator shafts. When a new dormitory was opened in a refurbished building that had been closed decades ago, stories surfaced of past tenants who had hung themselves in the bell tower, footsteps in nearby empty rooms, and one friend hearing whispers a few inches above his head at night as he lay in his dorm room alone. As haunted as the town was, I never experienced anything that would have been labeled as supernatural.

Growing up in a religious household, there was a certain belief prescribed to ghosts, which led me into the belief that anyone experiencing a ghostly presence was being afflicted by an evil spirit. The foundation of religion made it easy to explain the uncertainty around death; providing a sense of hope that death isn’t the end. By following a clear set of guidelines, religious followers could obtain entry into the afterlife or be reincarnated or get their own planet. It made the unknown of death easily more bearable.

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Which would you prefer? The grandiose vision of the afterlife as you breathe your last, or nothing?

As man evolved, religion emerged to provide context to the human experience. Lightning was attributed to the god of thunder, the sun rose and set because of the sun god, food grew and was harvested because of the harvest god, and so on and so forth until someone thought that all of the gods and rules were too complicated and founded a monotheistic religion.

Gods became the god of the gaps; gaps in our knowledge.

Over time, the stories changed. All those things that were once attributed to multiple gods—the seasons, the harvest, thunder and lightning—were attributed to one god. One capital-G God.

Bands and tribes formed and as they split and took those stories with them, the idea of organized religion began to form and with it came the development of their moral code: the do’s and don’ts and the punishments or rewards ascribed to each. They didn’t know that killing was wrong; it was just something you did.

As man continued to evolve, science and philosophy started to come into play. Often I’ve theorized about the story of the Tower of Babel and whether that was the first historical technological expansion, and if through that rush towards knowledge, that was when the idea and fear of God was introduced. Fear of what could be explained and the possibility of unlimited knowledge tore the tower down, destroying what could have been a golden age of advancement and replaced it with a dark age of hindered thought, morality and philosophy.

After Babel, for millennia, religion continued to evolve, becoming more easily digestible. Regardless of the religion, it basically boils down to: do this and you’re good, but do that and you’re bad. It’s a lesson in cause and effect. Good people get the afterlife, bad people don’t.

The biggest fault in all this, regardless of the stories about the (little-g) god or (big-G) God coming down to Earth to provide their wisdom and insight, is that religion was formed by Man which is prone to all sorts of corruption. When Judaism and Christianity were founded, there were all sorts of mass persecution from the main religious sects at that time. Everyone thought they were right and were willing to die or to kill for their belief. Even within those two religious groups there was plenty of persecution: the Spanish Inquisition, the various witch trials, slavery, the purging of Native Americans, not to mention that the role of women in these religions was non-existent and the leaders did everything they could to keep women from having a voice for centuries. The way we interact as a species, for better or worse—mostly worse—stems from the influence of religious dogma and practice.

I think of recent examples of Rajneeshpuram or the Branch Davidians—groups that were labeled as cults, mostly by white Christians. Are we just as bad? Have we snuffed out the next religious evolution due to our fear and prejudices?

I’m often left pondering: who is the better person? The Christian who gives the homeless man a care package because the Bible tells us to listen to the cries of the poor, or the atheist who does the same action because it’s the right thing to do?

What I said the day of the funeral still rang true, but I still didn’t know where that left me and what religious or non-religious label I wore. Could one be an agnostic Catholic? Could I be willing to admit that I don’t know what is true, and that there is a high likelihood that everything I had ever believed was wrong? All I know is that if my daughter asks me if Mommy is in heaven, I would answer “Yes” without hesitating.

Several hours later I find myself alone downstairs. The journal is put away, the television is off, my smartphone is on the counter plugged in. I’m free from distractions so that I can observe. The house is quiet. I can hear traffic in the distance, the sound of airplanes overhead, then footsteps. It’s coming from my daughter’s bedroom.

Rising from the couch, I head towards the stairs when I hear the footsteps moving. Now I can tell they are visibly louder and heavier than my daughter’s. They come out of the room and begin walking down the stairs at a familiar pace. Whatever it is, it paces around the kitchen. Going to the cabinet that holds the glasses, then to the sink, it pauses for a moment before heading towards me. Nothing is visible; only the sound. There’s no disturbance in the air, nor in the room. The footsteps end as they come closer to me; not as if they were slowly fading into the ether, but as if they are slowing down and stopping right in front of me.

Looking at my hands, I can see that they are shaking.

“Veronica?” I ask the empty space. I reach out, my hand shaking so badly that vibrating would be a better descriptor.

Nothing.

I’m about to pull my hand back, but then she’s there, my hand immediately tangled in her hair. I can feel it, every strand. My fingers reach out, touching the back of her neck. She leans her head into it and I can feel the warmth of her skin on my wrist, the exhale of her breath on the hairs of my arm.

“I thought you went to bed,” Veronica says. She moves in closer, pulling me into an embrace. Inhaling deeply she murmurs, “You smell good.” I can feel myself tense and so can she. “Are you okay?” she asks.

Clearing my throat I say, “Yeah. Sure. You just surprised me.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go to bed,” she says. “You know how I haven’t been feeling amazing?”

My mind goes back in time to two years ago when the diagnosis came in. It was low energy and pain in the abdomen that led to the tests which eventually led to the diagnosis.

Veronica sees the worry etched on my face and reaches up, cupping my cheek like she often did to Eleanor, and says, “Hey, it’s alright. I’m pregnant. We’re having another baby.”

And then she’s gone.

I’m back to where I was: at the foot of the stairs, alone.