The Skeleton on the Shelf

Memories of a skeleton, a father, and a prayer. A memoir of Complex Nocturnal Hallucinations.

First grade, nestled in blankets on the loft of my bunk bed. Everyone asleep, all the lights out. I opened my eyes to be met.

By a skeleton.

Sitting across the room on my bookshelf.

Not a toy, but a full-sized boney form.

Staring at me.

I screamed.

It watched, its eyes frozen on me. My eyes frozen on them.

I kept screaming.

It held its place on my shelf amongst my books and toys.

Image by Anna Loscotoff, Skulls of the Paris Catacombs

My dad, my protector, my knight in pajamas, threw open my door.

The skeleton sat contemplative.

My dad flipped on the light, banishing my late-night visitor.

The skeleton left without a sound, dispersing into the night.

The next day, my little first grade voice told the story to the third-grade girls. Girls who were my idols, who were grown and big and practically adult. They told me, in no uncertain terms, that I had been visited by Bloody Mary.

But I had not summoned her. There were no candles, no mirrors in my room, only artfully painted Disney characters on my window shades, lovingly rendered by my mother.

But somewhere in my subconscious, I suspected I was no longer safe in the world of sleep.

Nightly prayers, said on my knees before crawling into bed.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the lord my soul to take

Followed by the prayer,

Please let my daddy go to heaven.

My and my knight in pajamas, my dad, 1976

Perhaps it was the repeated, “If I should die before I wake… IF I should die… if I should die… will I die before I wake?”

Perhaps it was the church, telling me that my dad, an agnostic, a non-Christian, would certainly go to hell. They prayed for him every Sunday, that he would one day find Jesus.

And my soul? God was going to take my soul?

I want to keep my soul, to hold onto it, so that I can remember all the things I’ve learned.

The skeleton hasn’t visited in some 43 year, although I have been visited by others.

Nightmares have been my companion; aliens coming through the ceiling, my room filled with flood water as I watch it rise around the bed, my arms too long, bombs going off, a man standing in the corner. But I have also seen fairies and secret passage ways and heard ravens call to me from outside my window.

My sleep has been a playground of Complex Nocturnal Hallucinations, of waking and seeing things I’m not supposed to see, sleep walking, sleep taking, my heart pounding and my body filling with adrenaline.

I have woken many times to what I thought was my death; my brain interpreting the information as a stroke or seizure or heart attack.

Perhaps that nightly prayer is still ingrained in my subconscious.

“If I should die before I wake.”

I wake, clutching my chest, saying I’m not ready to leave. There is more I’m supposed to do.

As my dad lay dying, it’s not been quite 2 years yet, I tried to be his knight in pajamas, to be his protector in whatever time he had left. He slept for longer and longer, twenty-two hours a day, until he existed in a world of sleep. He was in-between worlds, in whatever space holds us there. He fell asleep on a Sunday, and finally ended his journey on a Saturday, two weeks later.

The hallucinations didn’t come for me then, laying on a fold-out at the base of his hospice bed. I couldn’t sleep deep enough. I had to give him his morphine, to check his pulse, to listen to his labored breathing, to check if he needed cleaning.

I had to stay on guard, in case the watchful skeleton came back.

Looking back on that night, I have begun to wonder if the skeleton was an intruder, or was it perhaps watching over me all along, the way my father did.

Perhaps it was a companion, keeping me company in the dark, with no harm intended.
Maybe it was there to teach me how to keep watch—
how to sit quietly at the edge of the night,
how to guard someone you love until the light comes back.