I really want to talk to my grandmother,
but I can't because she's dead. She died nearly a decade ago. My mother thinks my grandmother is the reason why I started smoking. I tell my mother this is a load of crap. But the only way I'm going to know for sure is if I talk to my grandmother now.

My grandmother was a smoker and so was my Mom, at least until I was the age of three. Mom smoked throughout her pregnancy too. Back then, when your belly was about to burst, smoking was no big deal. Decades later, Mom still believes that I was a five-pounder because of the doctor. "He had a golf match to get to," she says. "He rushed you out." Even though I was born two weeks early, not just a few hours.

If I chat with my grandmother beyond the grave, I'm sure she'll ask me for a smoke. That's all we used to do together when I would visit. We'd have long conversations too, about all kinds of topics. Edgar Casey, the psychic, was one we frequently got stuck on. He fascinated her. She got me fascinated in him too. Apparently he would fall into trances and utter all kinds of marvels that he had no business knowing, like cures to diseases and that each of us have bright auras.

"He was extraordinary," she'd say. Then she would look up and stare at the ceiling, sometimes for a quarter of an hour.

Our talks about Casey were the only spiritual talks that we had. She had long since given up Catholicism and the word God. Grandma was usually a practical as a household pen (that never ran out of ink). Life to her was about doing; it was not about sitting on a wooden bench listening to sermons. When I think about Casey now, I think about New Age books that can't shut up about "soul mates" and "auras." I doubt the authors even know where these words came from. They came from my grandmother's one true fascination: Edgar Casey.

I never told Mom about our conversations. Why would I? Our smoky talks were just between grandmother and myself. Mom wouldn't have understood anyway. Or, she would have offered a long-winded explanation that didn't explain anything at all. She did once have a prophetic dream though. When she talks about it, she puts one hand on her chest, like you would if you saw an awful event unfold.

At the time of the dream, she was nineteen years old. It was on the eve of starting her freshman year of college. The car was packed for the road trip that lay ahead the next day. Mom was too excited to sleep. She shuffled and shifted and at last settled down beneath the deep covers. Hours later, she awoke to Mary, the Virgin Mary, floating at the end of her bed. Mary told my mother that she could not leave for college the next morning. "Your father needs you to stay," is what she said.

When Mom got up the next morning, she went straight to her mother (my grandmother) and told her that she would not be going to college that quarter. Grandmother was confused. The whole family was confused. But all that Mom could say was, "I'm not ready to go." Later that same day, my mother's father was struck by a heart attack and died -- right in the living room. I've always wondered about the meaning of Mary's words in that dream. Wasn't it my grandmother that needed her the most at this time?

Anyway, when it comes to talking to a dead person, the Virgin Mary doesn't count. Mom can't help me in my quest to reach my grandmother beyond the grave. She can't understand the fear that rattles my feet, because in reality, talking to the dead is serious business. You don't know how it's going to turn out, only the dead people do. I wish I did not know this, but it accidentally happened to me once. The incident caused two handfuls of hair to pop out of my head. I saw them on my pillow the next morning. Had that dead woman hung around much longer, I would have died of shock. This is why I am hesitant to talk to my grandmother now.

Last spring, when traveling through Mexico, I took a guest room at a woman's house. There were four spare rooms. The woman usually reserved them for people that fly around attached to a kite. Unbeknownst to me, this small town was a paragliding hotspot with worldwide fame. I fell asleep exhausted, after a prickly hike and a long day of heat.

I did a lot of tossing and turning. It seemed that each part of my body was sore. Suddenly, my eyes fly open. I know that someone is watching me. In fact, I know that someone is in the room with me. I bolt upright and come face-to-face with a woman wrapped in a bathrobe. It seems that she has just stepped out of the shower in my room. A taste of electricity fills my mouth. I see tiny pins of light buzzing around the room. But there are no sounds. It is like I suddenly slipped inside of a person who cannot hear. I see two black holes beneath the towel that hoods the woman's head.

"What are you doing in my bed?" she says.

She does not say this out loud, but I hear her clearly. Frozen in fright, I do nothing except sweat. Each cell beneath my skin understands that I am facing the unknown. My instinct warns me that she should be lying in this bed, not me. My mind, however, cannot cope with the confrontation.

She slinks backward, away from the bed. This is when the electricity flies off the charts. The pins of light start crashing into each other so fast that the room gets hot. I realize that this energy is her anger, and it is being directed at me.

The following day, I learned that a young woman named Elena had recently died in a paragliding accident. She usually slept in the room that I had used the night before. From the moment she took flight that day she was headed for disaster. She was not strapped in right. For twenty minutes she held onto the ropes and supported her body weight. Then she could not hold on any longer. The people who told me this story were the same people who pulled her broken body from the lake. I did not sleep in that room a second night.

Like I said, talking to the dead is serious business. As soon as I got back to the states, I told my mother about the experience. My grandmother was not alive to tell. It was a phone call to Mom, so I lit up smokes as I treaded through the scary details. At the end of the call she said, "You've done it once. Now you've got to do it again. You've got to talk to your grandmother about your smoking." That's the thing about mothers. They have a creepy knack of knowing too much and too little.

I mean, how am I supposed to go about contacting my grandmother? Should I spend afternoons in a trance like Edgar Casey? Should I start playing Solitaire and putting together puzzles? These are activities that my grandmother loved. It seems most fitting that she will come to me when I am smoking. But maybe the only thing she will tell me is, "Put that out! You know that's what killed me." It's pointless for me to imagine what might happen if we meet, only my dead grandmother knows this.

What I do know is that something happened between Mom and my grandmother when I was born. Something got broken, and it never got fixed. This is the real reason that Mom wants me to talk to my grandmother now. My smoking is my mother's own smokescreen. She's really good at cooking these up. But I can't place my finger on what my mother is covering up, or what information she truly seeks.

In the years leading up to my grandmother's death, the two of them were in a no-speaking war. This is why I was at her side when she died, not my mother. Before my grandmother was admitted to the care facility, which was really a holding tank until death, she mailed me old newspaper clippings and photo albums. These stories and photos were of Mom and her life accomplishments. I still wonder why she sent them to me and not my mother.

Throughout my life, I've had my own silence wars with my mother. I used to talk to grandma during these times. She was the only person that understood my mother, and why I might be pissed off at her. Grandmother and I did do some tag teaming against Mom, but we were always careful not to go too far.

I want to understand what got broken between my mother and my grandmother. I want to understand how to fix it too. But why does healing this mess fall onto my shoulders? Couldn't they have figured it out while they were both still alive? The more I think about it, the more I know that my smoking has nothing to do with any of this. So in the meantime, I know what I will tell Mom. I'll tell her that grandmother came to me in a dream. "I will pay you a visit when you are smoking," she promised.

Until that happens, I'll just keep on smoking. I guess I am happy with this.