Heather T Stone

I’m currently sitting through a banger of a thunderstorm. The first crack of lightning was so close I heard the static whip across the sky before the boom.

My immediate reaction was to rip every plug out of the wall before I lost another computer.

When I was a kid, I watched lightning strike the pole in our backyard. The corded phone blew off the wall. Another time, a surge blew the motherboard in my computer, and the whole thing started smoking.

Have you ever heard of ball lightning?

They say it can travel through a window, come down a chimney, and do all sorts of damage.

But it’s cool.

I’m not afraid of it like my great-grandma was.

She was terrified.

And as far as I knew, her phone never blew off the wall.

Still, the first rumble of thunder was enough.

Lights out.

Every one of them.

No television.

Her chair moved to the far corner of the living room, and in the dark she sat.

And sat. And sat.

Until it was over.

Every time.

Every storm.

The same emergency flashlight in her hand.

No matter how many storms she survived, she was just as terrified of the next one.

So far, all I’ve done is unplug the laptop and decide bath time can wait.

Until the storm passes, I sit with the lights on and the television glaring.

No panic.

No Nan.

And oh, what I wouldn’t give to turn out the lights and sit in the corner with her again.

She never told me why she was afraid. I suppose there must have been a story behind it, but if there was, she took it to the grave.

She told me other stories about things she saw.

Visions she had.

Once, a candle appeared floating above her head. She followed it out of the house and down the street until it disappeared.

She said a man used to stare at her through her second-floor window.

And when she went to bed at night, she could see her departed husband lying beside her.

I think he was coming to get her ready.

Nan had Alzheimer’s.

Her mind went before her body could catch up.

But she had been telling those stories for decades before the diagnosis.

She died at ninety-three, on her birthday, right after the cake. We drove twenty minutes home before we got the call.

The phone was ringing when we opened the door.

I hope she loves lightning now.

Maybe it looks different from above the clouds.