In the Company of Ghosts
People often ask, “What’s it like being constantly surrounded by ghosts?” once they discover that I not only speak with the dead but also see them. It’s often accompanied by a daunted look conveying the general sentiment, “I can’t even imagine what that would be like!!” as they ponder how I manage such a high volume of ghost visitors.
Having spent the weekend assembling a puzzle with my grandpa, the dynamics of these interactions have been top of mind. If you guessed that my grandpa is no longer living, you are correct. Go buy yourself a lottery ticket if you’re the betting kind.
Being dead did not detract from his insistence on my upholding our familial puzzle rules as we approached this recent puzzle. Dump the entire contents of the box on the table. Flip all pieces to face up. Sort flat pieces into their own corner of the table while doing so. Assemble the border. Do not even think about tackling any other groupings until the border is complete. Only once enough pieces have been joined together to be palm sized or larger are they allowed to be placed inside the border.
These were instilled in me at an early age each time the designated card table was set up in the living room of the cottage on a rainy day. The same assortment of Springbok puzzles made an appearance every summer — the seven deadly sins (with two pieces missing), butterflies, wildflowers, song birds, and fungi (only if we had already completed the others too frequently).
image credit: 1968 octagonal puzzle, The Flowers by Maynard Reece
