1. The exact number of times she would tickle your back when you couldn’t sleep as a child.
2. Exactly which of her thumbs was broken in a windowsill when she was a child.
3. How that thumb feels to the touch.
4. The heart-hammering glare of a table lamp switched on at three a.m.
5. Her date of diagnosis.
6. The date of her daughter’s death.
7. The relationships between subverted inhibitions and astral projection.
8. The functions (and disfunctions) of the frontal lobe.
9. The areas of the brain impacted on her latest MRI.
10. The side effects of memantine.
11. If you’ve been sleeping enough lately.
12. If you’ve been eating well lately.
13. How little she eats these days.
14. What would happen if you stopped drinking before bed.
15. Cartesian dualism.
16. The existence of thin places.
17. The proximity of your bedroom to a ley line.
18. How easily ergot grows on sourdough bread.
19. A list of entheogenic substances.
20. That OBE is the preferred term.
21. The punny similarity between British knighthood and an out-of-body experience.
22. The last time you called her.
23. The last time you hugged her.
24. What she said then, over and over, when you left.
25. The scent of an unwashed, disembodied body.
26. The smell of her perm shampoo.
27. The sound of her floss threader.
28. The seven chakras.
29. The possibility of an eighth.
30. The function of the pineal gland.
31. The intersectionality of gender, disability, and esoteric ability.
32. The definition of sundowning.
33. Naomi Alderman’s The Power.
34. A willingness to think syncretically.
35. Directions to the closest mystic shop.
36. Her natal chart.
37. Yours.
38. The confluence of sixes in your birthdates.
39. The origin of the idiom “at sixes and sevens.”
40. What the nine of swords signifies.
41. What the six of swords signifies.
42. Why you keep pulling them.
43. That her soul cards are the Magician and the Wheel of Fortune.
44. That she found Pat Sajak tacky.
45. The Wheel of the Year.
46. What goes on on Walpurgisnacht.
47. The collected works of Robert Bruce.
48. Which essential oils stimulate the pineal gland.
49. How to light incense.
50. How to get incense out of the carpet.
51. Where you put all of her letters.
52. Where you put her grandparent’s journal.
53. What the last entry says.
54. Why you still haven’t found your USB port or your left Keds tennis shoe.
55. Whether she’s more likely to come when you’re alone.
56. The #1 hit single of summer 1956.
57. How earworms get stuck in our heads.
58. How to exorcise them.
59. The cost plus shipping of Uncommon Goods’ long-distance Friendship Lamps.
60. How to treat a sleepwalker with respect.
61. Your grandmother’s middle initial.
62. Why TAM might be appearing on the walls.
63. Graphomania and OBEs.
64. What to do if a patient with Alzheimer’s mistakes you for their dead child.
65. What to do if a patient with Alzheimer’s asks you if this is heaven.
66. Whether your grandfather knows how to video conference.
67. If he can do so urgently, perhaps in the next hour.
68. The importance of the Proustian madeleine.
69. The importance of the Prufrockian coffee spoon.
70. How many creams and how many sugars she took, when she still drank coffee.
71. At what age she introduced you to coffee.
72. How you understand now, in your thirties, the rationale behind nothing but Sanka crystals after noon.
73. What she thinks of your new house.
74. If she can even see your new house.
75. If this couldn’t all be merely a grief response.
76. The Kubler-Ross stages of grief.
77. Whether you agree that Kubler-Ross has become outmoded.
78. Stages 5 and 6 of Alzheimer’s disease.
79. The progressive difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s.
80. The impact of veganism on preventing Alzheimer’s.
81. The impact of doing the New York Times crossword on preventing Alzheimer’s.
82. The impact of daily physical exercise on preventing Alzheimer’s.
83. The physiological functions of tau proteins.
84. Of beta waves.
85. Of delta waves.
86. If you should tell your husband what is happening.
87. If you should tell your therapist.
88. If you should tell your very religious father.
89. If there’s a Chick tract about how wrong you are.
90. The confluence of OBEs across ancient cultures.
91. Technology and web-based communication as technical out-of-body experiences.
92. A working knowledge of metaphysics.
93. Of string theory.
94. Of dream theory.
95. A conversational understanding of Jung.
96. Of Walter Benjamin.
97. A healthy skepticism of Freud.
98. Insidious (2010).
99. The Visit (2015).
100. The issue of personal consent when it comes to astral projecting with Alzheimer’s.
101. The Monroe Institute’s stance on OBEs.
102. The Secret of the Golden Flower.
103. Theosophism.
104. Rosicrucianism.
105. Which beings live on the astral plane.
106. If your grandmother is afraid of demons.
107. Whether a secular witch should even believe in demons.
108. When you can safely start calling yourself a witch.
109. How to fight off bodysnatching by unwanted spirits.
110. The work of Eliphas Levi.
111. The silver cord and the golden bowl.
112. 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.
113. Colossians 2:5.
114. The date of her hysterectomy.
115. The etymology of the word “hysterical” and how it came into the world already gendered.
116. That part of her has rotted in biohazardous waste or been incinerated in a hospital.
117. Southern Baptist theology on bodies not interred whole and the Resurrection.
118. The ancient Egyptian concept of the ba and the ka.
119. Whether your heart or her uterus might weigh more than a feather.
120. Offerings to leave an astral body.
121. The recipe for your grandmother’s favorite cookie.
122. How to escape the Upside Down from Stranger Things.
123. The history of MKUltra.
124. Where your grandmother was between 1953 and 1973.
125. Balzac’s Louis Lambert.
126. Crowley’s Body of Light.
127. The collected works of Sylvan Muldoon.
128. Helena Blavatsky’s work with gurus.
129. Ghost Adventures (2008—).
130. The difference between mesmerism and quackery.
131. How not to be frightened by paranormal events.
132. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech.
133. Chapter 19 of As I Lay Dying.
134. If anyone has died in your house.
135. A working definition of pareidolia.
136. If “becoming” your older relations is itself a form of visitation.
137. What Dan Aykroyd’s dad did for a living.
138. What to tell your husband when he asks if you’re all right.
139. If an astral experient can visit you in your dreams.
140. How to recall all of the conversations you’ve had with her since 2018.
141. If two people can travel astrally together.
142. The can’t-miss spots of the astral plane.
143. Helen Keller’s travels to Athens.
144. What it feels like to leave your body.
145. The plush, warm weight of pushing back a velvet curtain.
146. Dante’s Divine Comedy.
147. The advice she gave you when you were twelve.
148. How to take note of synchronicities.
149. How many ravens have followed you home.
150. What your grandmother would have to say about them.
151. Laura Mulvey’s work on the male gaze.
152. Scopaesthesia.
153. Why Titchener’s work has been invalidated.
154. Telepathy.
155. The Shining (1980).
156. Why the string between two tin cans must be waxed.
157. The nature of Demeter’s relationship with Persephone.
158. How to safely open a pomegranate.
159. The sound of plastic Velcro fruit untethering.
160. Energy workers in your area.
161. Whether intent or content is more important.
162. The best mudra to facilitate calm.
163. The best mudra to gather energy.
164. How to ground yourself in sense memory.
165. How many coins Charon will take.
166. How to build a mind palace.
167. How to build a memory fort.
168. How to give it a lock.
169. When to invite your grandmother for coffee there.
170. What her astral home looks like.
171. How to mask your shock when it’s completely different from the house you remember.
172. The satin feel of her fingertips, prints rubbed off from years of cleaning with ammonia.
173. If it is safe to ask her for a hug.
174. How to tell someone, without speaking, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”
175. Whether your grandmother would approve of any of this anyway.
176. The significance of the witching hour.
177. The significance of three knocks.
178. The origin of a single feather on your pillow.
179. How to bless your house.
180. How to salt the earth.
181. How to forgive without forgetting.
182. The Irish blessings she cross-stitched on every one of her throw pillows.
183. The cost of a trip into the underworld.
184. How to get back safely.
185. If you can expect this to continue once she dies.
186. How to listen for her in the sound of the A/C unit.
187. In the sounds of birds.
188. That daffodils can be etheric furniture.
189. Why ravens are seen as messengers.
190. The mythology of Huginn and Muninn.
191. What her daily horoscope says.
192. Whether you believe the soul and the body are one.
193. If she does.
194. How to accept that you can’t know it all.
195. The existence of angels.
196. The direction bathtub spirals are supposed to go in the northern hemisphere.
197. Her favorite book at thirteen.
198. Your favorite book at thirty.
199. All the conversations you may not get to have again.
200. The Buddhist practice of contemplating death five times a day.
201. How lucky you are to have had this time with her.
202. The feeling of being a fourth daughter and not a first grandchild.
203. The life philosophy of a genteel Southern lady.
204. That preemptive grief is a real and valid phenomenon.
205. The narrative themes of The Babadook (2014).
206. The fatal comorbidity of Alzheimer’s and pneumonia.
207. Why it’s called a death rattle.
208. Thanatophobia, as it applies to you.
209. Claustrophobia, as it applies to her.
210. The collected works of Caitlin Doughty.
211. If the Society of the Good Death would consider death by Alzheimer’s good.
212. Which states allow for assisted suicide.
213. The benefits of sandalwood.
214. How not to appropriate other cultures when practicing magic while white.
215. What she has left for you in her will.
216. If such items can carry echoes.
217. The day of the week she was born.
218. The day of the week you called her in college.
219. The day of the week she visits now.
220. Her favorite movie.
221. Her favorite color.
222. Her favorite photo of herself.
223. The date of her last letter.
224. How you would know exactly where it was if you knew it was the last.
225. The chord progression of Florence Welch’s “Ceremonials.”
226. What AAOx3 means and how often she gets it right these days.
227. Auguste Deter’s contributions to medicine.
228. The practical, painful truth of senescence.
229. How to play “Heart and Soul” on a baby grand piano.
230. How to move on, to make grocery lists, after.
231. That this is how expectant parents feel when they’re visited, however briefly, by a cluster of bifurcating cells.
232. How to honor her memory.
233. How to cross-stitch.
234. How to pan-fry pork chops.
235. The origin of the Moirae.
236. Why it is important to cast and close a circle.
237. The memory of crows cawing just past the tree line on a dewy morning.
238. The last three bends in the road to her childhood home.
239. The best way over a swollen creek.
240. That someday, she’ll wander through the fog until she finds the right door, and when she opens it, she’ll say, “I am home.”
241. What she’s thinking right now.
242. Her telephone number.
243. Who to call in the event of an emergency, now that you can’t call her.
244. Scarlett O’Hara on tomorrows.
245. Macbeth on tomorrows.
246. Which beans to use for Lemuria.
247. Who gains entrance to Tir na nÒg.
248. Whether anyone but the Elves and Frodo Baggins gained entrance to the Grey Havens.
249. How many days, weeks, months, phone calls, visitations you have left.
250. How to let go.
Jessica Hatch is a writer and freelance editor based in North Florida. Her words have been published in The Millions, Writer’s Digest, and Fast Company, among others. When she’s not doing at-home yoga or ordering to-go wine deliveries, she’s working on a novel about a witches’ medical residency in Burgundy, France.