The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

When she had nearly achieved her goal, her Grandmother Clara, whom she had invoked so many times to help her die, appeared with the novel idea that the point was not to die, since death came anyway, but to survive, which would be a miracle.

This happens when Alba had been arrested, raped, tortured, and was praying to die on the cement floor of her cell. In that situation of terror and total despair, the ghost of her grandmother appeared to console her and give her the strength to fight for her life. Fortunately, I have never experienced anything as horrible as the ordeal that Alba endured, but I have had sorrow and fear in my life, especially at the time of the military coup and the brutal dictatorship in Chile. In those times I found comfort in the memory of my grandmother Isabel, that luminous woman who lived with one foot in this world and another in the Beyond. I don’t see ghosts, but I certainly feel all around me the presence of the kind spirits of my grandparents, my parents, and my daughter.