When my mother died, we turned into ghosts. She was so full of life that after her passing, she left a void in the flat, a void that we could not fill. Neither my father, nor my brother, nor I could do it, no matter how hard we tried. And I am not sure we tried hard enough. We would mope around the house, stay away from each other, then would come together again. We would move things around only to find them in the exact same place.

She died on 20 February 2013. Nine years and four days later, the world turned upside down like a table during a séance. On the ninth anniversary of her death, I called my father and heard his voice. It was the first time he couldn’t visit her grave. Four days later, I am calling him from work. I am standing on the stairs. I am trying to reach out, to explain  something to him. I am pacing in the landing. Upstairs, my colleagues are discussing the news, but that feels just like an echo that I don’t even notice. I am listening to his voice. Yes, he agrees, it is us, yes, guilty. My father has always appeared to me as some sort of a kind ghost, like Kasper. One of those ghosts who proffer jars of jam or lay a table for you when you visit someone. They throw toys in your bathtub the way they did  when you were a child. I call him a couple of days later and I hear him utter someone else’s words: and them, there, have you seen? Have you heard what they…? Don’t tell anybody. He calls me during my work meeting and whispers: you can’t say anything to anyone. A new law has been passed. Can you hear me? You have to keep mum.

I escape into work, into chats with friends, news, newsfeeds, messages, into small gestures – posts, translations, and words. I am using my words to glue shattered parts of myself together.

And then I come home to my father and my brother. And my brother - an angry, hurting ghost - is sitting in front of me, clicking his lighter, banging his ashtray against the table, and clanking his words like chains: labs, nazism, slavery. This is still better than slavery.

I want to scream; I want to turn the table upside down, but the table seems too real while I am almost transparent. This is my brother. And my father is behind the wall. And those words are just an echo. I turn my gaze down and say that I don’t want any of  this; there is death there, and it is wrong. My brother shakes his head: This is still better than slavery, better than nazism, better than our own death.

And I escape again. I leave and I try not to come back. I try to keep silent with them, with those voices on the phone, and with those Whatsapp messages. I try to remain silent when we visit my mother’s grave. We go there all  together in a rusty, battered car that resembles the Flying Dutchman. The car has only one belt in the front seat and it stalls at intersections. I freeze and wait for them to speak as if waiting for an echo. What would mother have said about us, about all that? What kind of ghost would she have become? I am afraid of this question and I try to chase it away, but it is always lurking somewhere close - in the rear mirror or on the next car’s bumper sticker.

We keep silent as we are tidying her grave. All you can hear is rustling of leaves, gurgling of the water that we pour from the bottle to rub the dirt off, and our quiet words addressed to mother. My brother picks up a brush and some stain. The wood has to absorb the stain, he says, and he starts applying it to the bench and to the table. One coat, another one, a third one. A fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. We are in a limbo, as if we were  frozen in amber. I shudder from this thought. It seems to me that just one sentence, one look can destroy this silence, and no words can ever put it together again. All that will be left is our howling, quarreling, and shouting - fighting over mother’s grave.

Crunching of a branch. I wonder where they are buried? Father looks far away. Who? My brother is looking at him with a cigarette in his mouth. He keeps staining the bench.

Soldiers.. There are many of them.

I take the brush from my brother. Faster, faster, we have to use up the bloody stain as soon as possible before everything crumbles  altogether.

A seventh coat, an eighth, and a ninth.

How many of them…so young.

Well, they have their own graveyard.

I feel so sorry for them, my father says, and I recognise his words, his own, and not those howls coming  from TV and chats. I finally recognise him.

Needs must. Do you think I want it? But I will go if I have to.

A tenth, an eleventh, a twelfth. I recognise my brother not by his words, but by his tone. He moves farther away, to our grandmother’s grave. Pour it out. We don’t need it anymore. We’ll finish earlier.

A thirteenth coat, a fourteenth,a fifteenth.

It is horrible. And there are no…there. It is all death.

Thank you, daddy.

And what about me? What kind of ghost am I? A ghost of mournful phrases with a shroud made of dreary posts, news pings and notifications that make me jump. I try to touch somebody; I try to tell them something, but my words, my hands go through them. I cannot fix it. I cannot put together everything that I had broken with my words. All I can do is to try again and again to touch my father, to touch somebody else, to attempt to move things around our empty flat. I can try again and again.