The Ghosts of the Living

Halloween makes me think of ghosts.

There are ghosts of the living everywhere.

How could the living have ghosts? It's easy. They just need to be gone from your life for good. That, after all, is what makes a ghost a ghost. Death is one way, but not the only one - all that really matters is they're gone, and you'll never see the actual (corporeal) person again. But something remains, does it not? Something that is utterly invisible, but more real in some ways than the chair you're sitting in. That something is their ghost.

You'll meet ghosts often, at first, when the person is newly gone. The meetings can go something like these (thoughts):

"Wait until ______ hears about this!"
"Maybe I could ask ______ - they'd know"
"I'd better include ______ in my cc list on this e-mail"

These ghosts, of course, evaporate into the ectoplasmic void as soon as you realize the actual person is no longer present.

I'm pretty certain (or my pride likes to hope) that I'm a ghost to at least a half-dozen folks, who for one reason or another will never pass (in reality) through my life again. Friends and relations I've lost contact with over the years - and worse, who probably wouldn't recognize me (personality) today. My younger self is actually a ghost of mine - he's not dead, but he's definitely not coming around again. Think "Phaedrus" of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Robert M. Pirsig, 1974), and you've got the general sense of that ghost.

These ghosts can give you some trouble, and cause various unproductive mental states, but believe it or not, they're not the worst, and certainly not the spookiest.

There's another kind of ghost I'm quite familiar with, but I'm not sure if it's a common one for others. This is the ghost of someone who has never lived, outside of my imagination. In a way, this could be said to be a ghost of (part of) myself. I'm not sure everyone sees them, because I'm pretty sure not everyone has the vivid imagination I possess. There are, however, some interesting, albeit spooky, aspects to this sort of ghost. These aspects are all entirely subjective/anecdotal on my part - if you have such ghosts, yours may very well be entirely different in aspect. I can't possibly know.

Probably the spookiest thing about them, is that although I never expect to actually see them (visual, "corporeal"), I actually do get that opportunity from time to time. Always as a stranger, on the bus, walking down the street, anywhere at all. Broad daylight doesn't matter to these ghosts. The tricky part is I'm never expecting to see them, so when I do, it's pretty "dumbfounding" and the simple reality test of speaking with the person is frightening in the extreme. So far I've never overcome that fear. Mind you, this is nothing like an every day experience. I'm talking maybe a few isolated times in my 48 years. These ghosts feel very "real", but they're rare, for me, anyway.

Funny though - my personal ghosts aren't "haunting" - they're hauntED. Nothing about their appearance is particularly startling except for the eyes. These are people who desperately need to tell somebody something - something really deep and important - if only someone would ask, and actually listen. It's in their eyes.

The other day, coming home from my initial session with my divorce attorney, I wondered if any of my fellow bus riders were experiencing me as such a ghost. To say the least, I was feeling about as haunted as I've ever felt in my life. I had just been presented with the hard reality of the process I'm about to go through, and the "best" likely outcomes for me financially (not too pretty, even in modern, "liberated" times). Dreams die a very hard death, and that day I had a quiet, business-like funeral for a dream. I felt like a ghost.