It started with a dress that wasn’t hers. One afternoon, my niece came home from preschool wearing a beautiful coral dress instead of her uniform shorts. “Swapped,” was all she would say. In her cubby, I found a velvet purse containing a note: “She wanted to be princess today. I consented.”
When I asked about the mysterious dress-giver, my niece described a “hallway girl” who always had gum – impossible, since gum is strictly forbidden at school. My sister turned pale when she saw the dress, murmuring something about a girl named Lydia from her past.
The next day, I saw her myself – a girl in a yellow dress standing by the old storage room, chewing gum. She disappeared when I blinked. The teacher later told me about Lydia, a student who had died years before by choking on gum during naptime.
That night, my niece whispered, “She says it’s my turn forever now.” I knew I had to intervene. In the storage room, I found Lydia surrounded by lost items – the coral dress, sparkly shoes, all the things that had gone missing. “I just want to play,” she told me. “Someone must remember me.”
We helped her find peace by returning all the swapped items and creating positive ways to remember her. Now the storage room is a cheerful reading nook, and we think of Lydia whenever we see children sharing or playing dress-up. Some spirits just want to be remembered – and sometimes, remembering them kindly is all it takes to help them move on.
