Love and Ghost Stories

I try to escape my past, but it somehow finds a way to follow me, no matter where I go. I left my old hometown to get away from the place we once lived. Where we had all our happy memories, and the sad ones too. How foolish I was to believe I could get away from him!

No matter where I go, he’s always still inside my heart and my soul. How can I get away from a ghost who insists on living inside me? Even now that he’s dead, maybe even more than before, I think about him every day.

Is it grief or merely my imagination that I tend to see him in the strangest places, that reminders keep popping up like that jack-in-the-box that used to scare me when I was three? I see his smile in a new Dad’s face, looking at his baby girl. I hear his laugh in the wind, see his face on a cloudy day, drifting by in the sky. Is this his way of saying goodbye? To remind my mortal self that death is not the end?

At times I think I must be going crazy from the grieving process, others I feel his presence like the scent of incense drifting by as you pass a temple. Is his soul trying to say something to me? Is it all in my head? I am conflicted, you see before I lost him physically, we had been divorced for years. Ten years of marriage and all the memories that go with it aren’t so easily forgotten.

Why now, when it’s too late to even say goodbye, do my thoughts and dreams keep coming around to him again? I wonder if I should chalk it up to guilt, or the supernatural. I believe there is a life after death, that we don’t just disappear when the soul leaves the body. But this up-close and personal proof is a bit much even for me.

You know the old saying, “you can’t take it with you”? Well it seems like love is the exception to that rule. In fact, love is the only thing you can touch someone with, from the other side of that great divide between the living and the dead. The thought of his spirit still being near comforts me, even as it sort of creeps me out. Is he watching when I’m in bed with my new love? I can hear his ghost now, “Don’t need to see THAT…my eyes, my eyes!”

You can laugh at that it was meant as a joke. The reality is unsettling, unnerving, and weird, but also soothing in a strange way. To dream that when you go, you can still show your love to the one you hurt the most. I’d like a chance like that. 

Dealing with hearing his thoughts in my head is another matter entirely. Its like I hear him now. Closer than when I used to push his wheelchair around the town I left, because it hurt too much to see our old home with new owners. Because every street I walked down had a memory. I thought if I left, the past would be left there, and I could finally move on. Somehow that didn’t work out the way I planned.

The best laid plans of ghosts and ex-wives…I know that isn’t the way it goes, I’m trying to make a point here. Don’t think that you can leave a memory or a spirit behind like a lost piece of luggage. If you could, I’d be at the spiritual baggage claim, trying to exchange him for a less annoying haunting. I jest of course, but the point is the same. When love is that strong, even death is no barrier. You carry someone around with you in your memories, in your deepest self.

He pops up at the strangest times, having a mental conversation with me. I find myself in the eerie position of him dictating a letter from himself to my new husband, warning him to treat me right. Do you think I’m crazy, or need to speak to a shrink or perhaps an exorcist? I would have thought the same once upon a time. At least I try to do it privately if I can. I can almost see myself and the strange looks directed at my back, if I walked around in public having a talk with nobody. Call her doctor and arrange some better medication, toot suite!

I don’t need a rubber room, a straight jacket, or better sedatives. What I really want is a warning label somewhere in the vows. Something like, “Until death do us part…if I feel like it…I’ll decide later.” His sense of humor would have liked the idea of that. He was kind of weird when he was alive. Now that he’s a ghost, he can ramp up the spooky whenever he feels the urge.

I’m not trying to scare you really, just some friendly advice, widow to widow. Casper has got nothing on this guy. At least he tried to be friendly. My ghost just wants to be annoying and sarcastic. Or if he feels up to it, reassuring and loving, even apologetic. I don’t know what to expect from one day to the next. When we were still together, he used to joke about haunting me. At the time, I thought he was just joking. Guess again!

Having your ex floating around, making little digs at your lover, is a little disconcerting, to say the least. To give you a sample of what I mean, the letter I referred to earlier began; To Rock-Head. (it makes more sense when I tell you his real name is Rocky) He ended the missive with the parting shot, “I’m dead now, not in a wheelchair, a-hole.”

I’m thinking to myself, “Give me a break, will you? He’s going to think this nonsense is coming from me!” I can hear the ghost laughing to himself, something like, “He had every word coming to him for a long time. So what? He can’t kill me all over again. What’s he gonna do? I’m already haunting him and you. Starting an argument would be fun. Hmm…wonder what else would royally piss him off?”

Don’t think that’s an exaggeration, because this is coming from a guy who threatened to stick his crutch where the sun doesn’t shine on a regular basis, once. You think his personality is magically going to improve, just because he’s dead?

As the saying goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. How much closer can you get than floating right beside them, making little jokes at their expense? What an afterlife! You can piss off the most powerful, the biggest guy in the room (in this case, his replacement in my life) and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it! Come to think of it, what was that phone number again…I need to call GhostBusters!