I have a new story out in the world. “The Window-Room” appears in the June 2025 issue of parABnormal Magazine (Hiraeth Publishing). Unlike many of my stories, this one is personal. It’s a fictionalized version of a family ghost story.

Here’s the facts. My mother’s Aunt Marie wasn’t really her aunt. Marie was a cousin, but she had been raised as my grandmother’s sister. Why? Because Marie’s own mother had died in the 1917-1919 influenza pandemic, leaving behind six children, including three-year-old Marie and a baby girl. Nobody’s sure why Marie went to live with her cousins while her five siblings stayed with their father (who remarried). Everyone involved has passed, and we’ll never know what secrets they took to their graves.

But of course there’s more to the story.

When Marie’s mom died of influenza, her sister and mother called the Italian undertaker. Brooklyn was chock-full of Italian immigrants in 1919, but there was only one undertaker that the family trusted. Maybe it was because he spoke Italian, or perhaps he was a friend. In any case, he only visited their neighborhood once a week.

The dead woman’s mother and sister sat in a room with the baby girl, discussing their dilemma: Should give the baby to the undertaker along with her mother? The baby was alive, but she was sick with the influenza too, and everyone thought it might only be a matter of time. While they sat talking it over, the cradle flipped, tipping the baby out (unharmed) onto the floor. Nobody was standing anywhere near the cradle at the time. The women took it as a sign that they should keep the baby and not give her up to certain death.

This is the only story like this that I’ve ever heard in my family. To my knowledge, nobody on that side had a reputation for drama or tall tales. I have no reason to believe they weren’t telling the truth about what happened in that room. Some things are simply beyond our comprehension, too mysterious for us mere mortals to understand.

I asked Mom: “What was her name? Marie’s mother, the one who died?” Mom didn’t know. We asked other family members. They didn’t remember. I looked at the family tree that my mother’s relatives had created on Geni.com years ago. There was a pink rectangle for this mystery mother, but no first name.

Well. Being a mom myself, who’s lived through a pandemic (though a less harsh one than the epidemic 100 years ago), the thought of dying and leaving my young children behind horrifies me, as it must have horrified her. I thought of how she likely suffered in her final days, mental anguish compounding physical pain. If I could do one thing to honor her, it would be to search through records until I found her name.

Days later, after deep dives through steamship passenger manifests, birth records, marriage certificates, cemetery photos, census ledgers (handwritten in cursive, with many names misspelled), and New York City historical websites, I found her.

The evidence was sufficient beyond reasonable doubt, but I needed to be just a little more sure. When she heard the name, Mom nodded. She told me it lined up with naming traditions for daughters at that time, who were often named for grandparents. She called up one of her cousins, Marie’s son. He couldn’t recall his biological grandmother’s name (not terribly surprising, as the only grandmother he had known was his adoptive one). He said, “Mom told it to me once, a long time ago. It sounded real Italian.” My mom told him the name. “Yes!” he said. “That was it!”

I used her real name in this story: Michelina. Most of the rest is my own imagining of how her life might have been. I hope she’s at peace, and that she can somehow see that her children’s children thrive, even if her own view through the window-room has closed.