The Ghost of Love(On Hold)

  I sat on my bed. I had just got done packing and had my stuff shoved into my closet just in case my mother came into the room before we left. We weren't leaving till midnight tonight, so we had a few hours. Every time I passed by my guitar I would stand there look at it and then move on to packing something else. I did that, maybe, five times. I sighed. I couldn't take the guitar with me, it would be too much weight and its not a necessity, I couldn't bring it with me.

  I sat down and sighed. I picked up the guitar and started strumming knowing I would never be able hold this guitar in my hands and have my finger tips run over the strings that have been played by my father and myself. I would never feel the same soft wood that my father sanded and shinned himself so many years ago. This was the last connection I had to my father and I was going to leave it behind.

  I laughed as I sat and remembered what my dad told me years ago before his unexpected death.

  I was four years old sitting my dads lap with his guitar on my lap. He was strumming the strings and singing a song just randomly. He looked down at me and smiled. Mary sat in the couch next to him her small head hidden by a book.

  My dad looked down at me and smiled again, "Son, one day this guitar will be yours. Liddy. She will be your guitar. She will love being played by you as much and she does me." I giggled at the name of the guitar. My father laughed and then said, "Liddy, she's a redwood. I don't expect you to understand right now, Son, but one day you will."

  How wrong was he. I understood everything he said. I understood Liddy was a redwood. She was a beautiful redwood guitar. A while ago I stopped calling her Liddy, I couldn't. It hurt too much calling her Liddy. Thats what my dad called her. I bowed my head and pressed my face against her smooth surface and whispered, "Liddy, Imma miss you baby. We've been through everything. You were there with me when Dad died. I love you, don't you forget that. I'm sorry I have to leave you, Liddy. You'll understand someday."

  I wasn't exactly talking to her more like I was talking to my dad or to myself talking myself out of bringing her. I think it was both. I think I was trying to find away to appologize to my father for leaving his guitar, the one he told me that would be mine and then I would pass it down to my kids and so on. I shead a tear as I put Liddy down and stand up.

  I look at the doorway and see Mary standing there, tears in her eyes. "You're leaving Liddy?" She asked. I didn't know she remembered Liddy. I knew she remembered the guitar but I didn't know she remembered what Dad had named her.

  I nodded and said, "She'll slow us down. I'll come back for her someday. But for now she has to stay here."

  She looked at me as if I just betrayed her. Then she came at me. Well she didn't come at me come at me. She just ran to me and when I thought she was going to hit me she just broke down crying. I heard her whispering something, but I couldn't understand it through her sobs. Then she looked at me and started yelling at me, "You're leaving the only thing you have left to Dad! You're leaving Liddy! You're leaving Dad behind! You're making his death known! How dare you! How dare you." She sobbed more and I held my sister tears slowly sliding down my cheeks.

  I knew how she felt I had made this argument with myself more than once and I had made all the points she just did. But I knew I couldn't take Liddy with me. I knew I was leaving not just Liddy, but Dad too. I hated having to leave Liddy but I knew I had to. Finally Mary looked up at me and stopped sobbing. She straightened herself and looked out the window at the darkening sky.

  "I don't want to leave Liddy." I said softly.

  She looked at me like she missed my comment then looked out the window again. She sighed and then said, "I'm not letting you leave this house without Liddy. There's no way you're leaving Liddy. Dad put all his hard work into that guitar and we're not going to be the ones to have all that be taken away. You know what will happen if you leave it hear. She'll destroy it. There's no doubt. Everything we're about to leave behind she will destroy. Only the things she could use will she keep and Dad's guitar will be the first thing to go. You know that as well as I do."