Ghosts

When I was in kindergarten and first grade we lived in a small town in northern California: Willows.

Our strange two story house built in the 20s, with the ornate moldings inside and out, was dwarfed by a larger, more ornate house of the same era across the street.

There was an old couple who inhabited just a few rooms on the ground floor, and the remainder of the house was uninhabited. Lights never shown through the cracked window panes of the second and third floors.

My brothers and I thought it haunted.

So, of course, in the tradition of boys of those years, we dared each other to sneak in.

We didn’t see any ghosts, though we got spooked a couple of times by dusty shadows and creaking timbers in the upper rooms during that memorable trespass.

There has been other times I thought I’ve seen ghosts, for real. Some of them during my sojourn into eastern mysticism.

I think it is natural for people to believe in ghosts. After all, Christ Followers believe in angels, and one spirit form hints at others.

The Bible says King Saul used a medium to summon the spirit of Samuel (I Samuel 28).

Since my experiences in that ashram during the 70s I have phobicly avoided such mystic experiences, though some have come none the less.

I think my life, our lives, are filled with ghosts of other sorts.

I have clung to the ghost, the memory, of my first child... and I have often thought of him, written of him. I think that his death is something I am slowly coming to terms with... I suspect the reason I still carry the burden of grief for him is not so much that I miss him, or that I blame anyone for his death, but because, deep down, I have not been able to forgive myself. Though my mind tells me it was not my fault, I still harbor the self recrimination and beat myself with that ghostly flail. The heart can be a stubborn organ.

I haunt myself with that ghost, the ghost of a child frozen in my mind, in my heart, at three and one half months of age.

As Saul sought to conjure the ghost of Samuel, I think I, perhaps others, conjure other ghosts to haunt us.

When I go in to the new building of our church, I smell the new carpet and my eyes roam across freshly painted walls, I feel a small trepidation deep in my heart over the knowledge my son started the fire which resulted in that building. I hesitate for a moment over the thought of who and how many people I love could have been hurt or killed. I permit that building to be a ghost to me of an event I should let go.

For my wife it is worse. For her the guilt, and anger, and regrets she has over our son being behind that fire haunts her as much as the cherubic face of Willy does me.

Those who have attended that church for more than a few years are familiar enough with the old building to see the ghostly reflections of the old shape in the walls, even though the architect did a masterful job in using the old foundation to look as if the new shapes of the walls are intentional. The old governing board room is the nursing mothers’ room. The large window with the cross was the pastor’s office. That little jog beside it was the old entry. The recess beside that was the library, though now it looks like it was perfectly designed for wheelchair access to the stage.

We see ghosts of the old in the shape of the new.

It took a few days, but I have gotten Brenda to go stay with her AA sponsor.

I told her I need her to prove I can trust her again, and I don’t think I can do that if I let her simply slide back into our home without dealing with the ghosts of her affair still trailing her so closely.

We have talked about how we might rebuild that trust.

It is going to be difficult, though the overall need is plain. She needs to become someone who cannot conceive of doing such things, such betrayal, ever again. Then, I need to be able to recognize that change in her.

I don’t know if we can shake that ghost. Can I shake the specter of the other man, a man I have still never laid eyes upon?

She told me that if she stayed with her friend she might be more sorely tempted to contact John again. She really wants to move back home.

But, in saying that I can see that she has not completely broken free from him. There is a passive/agressive threat hidden in that statement, that if I don’t allow her back she might go to him.

I said that if she sees him again, it will, somehow, come out.

I have told her that for as long as she does not contact him I will not ask for the divorce. For as long as she strives to regain her integrity, seek to become only mine, then I will do all I can to help her. But she must prove herself as someone I can trust before I open my heart to her again.

So the events of these past few months haunt us.

We drag so many shadows with us through our lives.

My children still have deep fears haunting them from Haiti. I still fear the looming image of my father when I stood only 2/3 of what I do now.

When I sit in our pastor’s office, I usually take the right side of the maroon couch, the spot closest to where Jeremiah played with that candle, huddling near the ghost of that event.

Perhaps one of the sweetest victories we will grasp when we leave this earth, when we become fully spiritual beings, will be the exorcism of all the ghosts we have collected along the way.