My aunt Betty died this November. My friend Russell died two Novembers ago, and my grandmother Clara four. November is my favorite month, but this is a lot to get past.

Happy Thanksgiving. Goblin is on the windowsill, staring off into the cloudy sky. Rob is in the other room, playing the piano. I have a lot to be thankful for. I’m thinking about ghosts, though. There is a little one, the color of a shadow, I keep seeing around the house. (I’m the only one.) I’m also thinking about the difference between an angel and a ghost. Everyone has said Aunt Betty has gone off to be an angel, and I hope that’s true because that would mean there are such things as angels, and it would also, I think, be the culmination of her life’s ambition.

A day or two before she died, high on morphine to dull the pain, she said she saw her dead relatives outside the second-floor window, peering in at her.

There was much talk at her funeral about her going to be with her loved ones in heaven. She was the last surviving person in her generation of my family, so there are a lot of names on that roster. But there was also talk about how she would be watching over us all, looking out for our interests. “She can do more for us now than she could while she was alive,” the priest kept saying.

So now I’m paranoid about being watched at all times. Believe me, the last thing I need is another paranoia to add to the list; if I was worried before that a stranger was going to walk into a public bathroom while I am using it, imagine how I feel now about dead people watching me in there. I hope, if there are angels, that they have better things to do. There are probably a lot of books they’ve been meaning to catch up on now that they have time.