My grandmother died when my mom, Lisa, was seventeen. Grandma’s death from cancer was prolonged, and my mother’s role in her care forever shaped who she is. So Lisa was understandably shaken when her Aunt Libby called a few weeks ago to say, “Your mother is here with me.” This would have been enough, but the phone had rung just as my mom was packing some of her mother’s most prized possessions. Grandma’s icon of the Saint of Invalids and the Emory family bible (Emory is my grandmother’s maiden name). My mother was holding these items in her hand when Libby, from whom she had not heard in months, called to inform her that she was in the presence of Lisa’s mother’s spirit.
Strange as this was, it was only the first chapter in the spiritual misadventures of my mom in the last few weeks. She has been working on landscaping and remodeling our old house in the hope that these improvements will expedite the sale of the property, which has been more sluggish than we would have liked. Toward this end, she hired some Korean boys from down the street. Their mother, upon learning of the act, swore to prepare some Korean ribs as a gift. This woman and her daughter came to the house, and Lisa gave them the tour. As they were leaving, the mother stopped at the edge of the driveway, and began gesturing frantically in the area between the garage door and the side door. She had a terrible feeling, she said, a sense of something wrong. The mother was becoming increasingly agitated and started speaking rapidly in Korean, much to the confusion and embarrassment of her daughter. Lisa, meanwhile, was trying to figure out what had so irritated the woman: cracks in the driveway? Chipped siding? Leaves in the gutter?
Suddenly, my mom realized that the woman was not sensing something without the house, but within. Just behind the wall where she was pointing, between the garage and the side door, was a closet. Lisa quickly went inside to see, as would anyone charmed and enthralled by superstition, what might have caused this woman such aggravation. After looking in the closet, she understood immediately. “Is it bad luck,” Lisa asked the woman, “to pack a Buddha?”
The woman and her daughter both gasped. I imagine the daughter, likely not as superstitious as her mother, was more amazed than anything else that a cause of her mother’s behavior had been discovered. Of course, it’s terrible luck and very disrespectful to wrap a Buddha. They quickly unpacked the bronze statue and the Korean woman began speaking to it in Korean. She poured it a glass of water as an offering. The daughter explained: “She is telling it that you are sorry, and that you didn’t know. She is asking for forgiveness for you.” The mother explained to Lisa what must be done to avoid the bad luck associated with her deity-wrapping crimes. (At this point, when telling me the story, my mom led me to the foyer of our new house where, to my surprise and amusement, she had arranged a small Buddhist shrine. The statue was seated on a small pedestal, with a tiny candy dish, incense, a candle, and so on.)
This, alone, would have been enough to count as a spectacular coincidence. However, when my mom went back into the house after bidding farewell and thanks to the Korean woman and her daughter, she discovered a phone message. It was Aunt Libby again, asking for my mom to call her back. “I have a terrible feeling, Lisa,” Libby ominously intoned, “I am afraid your brother Ken is going to commit suicide!” Lisa quickly explained away her prophetic sensations, “No, no, Libby, that’s not it…” My mother recounted the story of the wrapped Buddha.
With a chill, my mother remembered something about the first time that Libby had called. Although, at the precise moment of the phone call, she had been holding the Emory family bible, it was only moments before that she had taken a small box and a generous helping of tissue paper, and had packed away the Buddha.
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