When the Time Comes

At a certain age you start seeing ghosts. In the faces of passing people I see people I used to know. They are not yet dead but they are gone. At least gone from my life. I see them as they were when I knew them and I see them as I imagine them now. I see memories and anticipations of people who are not here. I see ghosts. I cannot believe for a moment that I am the only one who sees them, well, I’m not the only one who sees their own ghosts as mine are mine alone. I feel like this is an “old person thing” but how is that possible when I cannot be that old although I’m sure that I am. I remember hearing old people, which I know now is just someone who is firmly middle aged like my current self, say, “oh you look like so and so did when she was young.” They were seeing ghosts. But it wasn’t just the ghosts of people that we see because there are ghosts of places that have changed too. That used to be a beautiful old house or a field or school before it became a parking lot or gas station. The ghost of prices past are the hardest lately. Inflation will do that. Leave it to the recession to drag up memories. I remember the price of bread being under a dollar and that ghost bread trips me up at every bread purchase now. My husband’s price ghost is a movie theater ticket. It haunts him and won’t leave him be.

In all the glory that is our experience we are left with wounds and shadows and ghosts. Sure happy glows and joyous memories also abound but in the glory a little pain seeps through. The shadow of regret that lies behind and just to the right of everything. It’s there but just out of sight. It feels too much like someone staring at us. It causes a bit of paranoia after a while. Regret in the shadows likes to trip us as we try to confidently walk from room to room and moment to moment in our current lives. I think it’s a cousin of the ghosts of people and things of the past. You know they are related because every glimpse of a ghost stirs a bit of regret. I should have said I love you. I should have bought that house when it was cheaper. I should have jumped in with both feet. I should have spoken up or kept quiet or done anything other than what I did.

Not all ghosts are bad or sad. The ghost of kisses past pop up once in a while. The ghost of the best kiss I’ve ever had comes unexpectedly every eight years or so. Although it’s great for me it can bring about a bit of disillusionment or mess with my contentment of today. Or even frighten the people around me if I happen to mention it. Like the ghost of a movie theater ticket it can stir up great memories while ripping us from our current happiness. It disentwines our souls from this moment which can lead us in any direction other than straight ahead. Untethered can be unsafe.

Some ghosts have staying power. George Washington, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra. Their ghosts are mostly caricatures of who they once were. I’m both jealous and appalled. I want my ghost to hang around but maybe not at the expense of my actual being. What good is a ghost if it only shares my name and is not truly a reflection of who I was? Not that we can control our ghosts. There is a ghost of me that haunts old friends. That ghost says I love to clean. This ghost haunts several people I knew in the past. I think it’s an ugly ghost that tells lies or insinuates I have failed to live up to my potential. But are these rogue ghosts closer to reality than my memory of myself? Perhaps we are always caricatures of ourselves in the eyes of other people. Only we know the subtleties and complexities that bind our random actions and traits together. If we are lucky. So many of us don’t even know our own subtleties and complexities. Or we are in fact all a bit delusional of who we really are and spend much of our time imagining who we wish we were or who we want to be. So much so that we don’t really even know who we have been. So misguided about who we are that ghosts of ourselves can come around and scare the crap out of us. Perhaps a well remembered and well distributed ghost is just the result of an amazing marketing scheme. It could have been George, Alex, and Cleo’s plan all along. Lose the subtle. Lose the inadequacies. Turn up the accomplishments. Keep all the stories short. Cut a tree. Never lied. Was better than dad. Took over the world. Seduced the most powerful men but also had her own plans. Not subtle. No depth. Well polished business ghosts.

I met my great grandmother once. My children never met her or have heard me mention her name. When I am the only one left alive of those who had met her, her ghost will be hanging by a thread. What about the time when I leave? Am I the one setting great grandmother’s ghost free? Or am I guilty of damning her existence into oblivion? I have found traces of my ancestors. More paper trails than ghosts. They are flat, rigid versions of people. There are no ghosts to be found in census records. There is nothing left to connect to. They did not build into legends like Alexander the Great. They didn’t have a great ghost marketing team. They fell into a bottom drawer cabinet and suffocated on the stuffy air of someone currently forgetting. I don’t want to be a caricature but I also do not want to dry rot into nothingness. I assume all potential ghosts feel this way.

I worry about my ability to stay here and now. It seems to be a struggle when you get to the age where you see ghosts. I worry about all the ghosts I will condemn to darkness because I don’t speak of them. I worry about how soon my own dissolution will be. Will my great grandchildren know me and speak of me? Or at least carry an ember of thought of me so I continue to exist? If only through remembering stories their parents have told them? I don’t dispute the existence or power of God or the fact that he offers us eternal rest in heaven. My ancestors are exalted in eternal rest I’m sure. But I do not recall them and no one here on earth utters their name with memories of their existence. They may live on into eternity in heaven but they are no longer here. Perhaps that is why we name our children after a favored family member. Once they are gone and we are gone, the story remains hidden in the articulation of the name. Each name is a tiny whisper of a ghost, the life they lived, and the people who love them all in a few syllables.

I finished high school thirty years ago this spring. I’m at that age where I have started to see ghosts. The children of my high school friends help to bring them out. Facebook is like a seance triggered by graduation photos of children whose parents I once knew and might in a small way still know now. In the photos of their children I see them and myself as we were. There is a bit of blurring of worlds and experiences. I knew your mom in high school. You look just like she did at this age. But does she? Does she look anything like her mother or am I just seeing another ghost? Dementia might just be the ghosts overwhelming us when we get to the point we make too few new memories. Just before we become the past we succumb to it.

I guess I could vanquish the ghosts, great grandmother and all. I could move into a future where I see nothing but the future. It might save me from self-inflicted hauntings and a bed in the dementia wing at the old age home. Except that I see what happens when we forget our history. I see it on the news every night. But I have also seen what happens when the weight of the past does not allow breathing room for what is evolving now. I am at the age where I am seeing ghosts. Ghosts of myself where I should see my own children as they go off to college and start their own lives. Lately I’m yelling out warnings to a ghost of myself who I see in my children and I only whisper accolades to the child who exists here in front of me. The reverse should be the case. Can we live with ghosts and not be overwhelmed by them? I don’t know. By the time I do, I will be the one doing the haunting.

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