The Color of Ghosts

“Memories warm you up from the inside.

But they also tear you apart.”

(Haruik Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

Dad died a month ago, and as the dust from his passing settles, I find myself meandering down long-forgotten paths. I have not lived in Westlock since I left home after high school, though I’ve visited throughout the years. This week is one of those visits – to support my recently widowed mother; to support my recently bereaved self; to converse with ghosts of the past.

Mom and I were chatting about life when we first moved to the area; about buildings, people, and events. As so often happens, our memories did not align; each of us was convinced that our own recollections revealed fact. The ghosts of the past, however, do not revisit us in anything representing a linear or logical fashion.

“Humans, not places

Make memories.”

(Ama Ata Aidoo)

I walked down the residential streets of my childhood, specters of the past drifting along beside me – the briefest whisper of a memory from this house – a friend lived here perhaps; I can’t recall, and the memory is pulled away in the breeze. Everything is smaller now, less grand, closer together. An 8-year-old’s world is big, full of wonder and dangers; the adult world, it seems, has shrunk.

All but one of the neighbors who framed my childhood world have moved away… or died. The house, my home, who’s windows and walls, floors and halls I knew so intimately has been remodeled, the tree in the front yard removed. Ghosts… so many fading ghosts.

“Memories are bullets

Some whiz by and only spook you.

Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.”

(Richard Kadrey, Kill the Dead)

I’ve forgotten most of the life I lived here. I recall only the highest peaks of recollection, those that stand tall above the rising waters of forgetfulness. On some of these peaks are sounds, smells, names; some of their familiarity is comforting, some disturbing, some perhaps would be better left with yesterday’s ghosts.

The very strange thing in all of it is, remembering the boy of this town feels like recalling stories told to me of someone else. I have travelled a very long way down life’s road since the days of my youth; I am no longer who I was, nor am I who I will be. The monsoons of passing time have eroded my yesterdays, leaving me stranded on the sometimes-uncertain ground of right now.

“The past is a foreign country;

They do things differently there.”

(L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between)

Perhaps, though, that is the value of yesterday’s ghosts – that they remind us of who we have been, so that we might understand the great journey we have made to be who we are today. We are never our yesterdays, any more than Michelangelo’s sculpture, “David” is a newly quarried block of marble. We are being sculpted; life, Love, wisdom – these chip away at us, refining, remaking, revealing.

I find that I do not long for the will-‘o-the-wisp of my yesterdays, though there is some pleasure in reminiscing. Life is to be found now, as I am, in this very amazing moment. Yesterday’s ghosts tell me a story, one that perhaps roots me, and so doing allows today’s fresh growth to be full of vigor, nourished by the wisdom of yesterday’s experience, and the sunshine of life in the moment.

If you are tempted to incline your ear to the myths of old ghosts, do so with care. Listen, learn, and then let the past be the past. Be who you ae today, full of possibility, laden with potential. You, right now, are a gift to the world, one that cannot be replaced by anyone else.

I leave the last word to Lewis Carroll, and his good friend Alice:

“It’s no use going back to yesterday,

because I was a different person then.” 

(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

The color of Ghosts…

bitter sweet chocolate.

Past

Done

Present

Be

Now

Is

Breathe

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3.13-14)

- African Traditional: “You can only coil a fish when it is fresh.” (Nupe Proverb, Nigeria)