Walking with Ghosts

Every day, I walk with a ghost. Actually, she is a holy spirit, but if I call her that, it may seem sacrilegious, so I’m giving her a nickname. The ghost has long, dark hair and mischievous eyes. She always wears the same thing, whatever the weather – leggings, a t-shirt with the name of a daycare on it, and a cream-colored sock hat with a pouf.  She never shivers or sweats, which is irritating, but that’s a ghost for you.  She never gets tired either, which is another ghostly attribute – endless energy.  She could walk for hours, but we usually stop after one because I always have a bunch of irksome things to do, like cleaning out the refrigerator, grocery shopping, or cooking dinner. 

This whole food thing is never-ending. I’ve been cooking dinner roughly 365 days a year for 40 years, with occasional time off to get the flu or go to Los Bravos. If I never saw the inside of a grocery store, pharmacy, or Walmart again, I’d be delighted. But of course, the living amongst us need food and Advil and toilet paper, along with hundreds of other things.

 It’s an endless cycle, but the ghost is not in it anymore. She got kicked out of the loop, so she is no longer running the earth like a hamster on a wheel, always late for an appointment at the end of the next spoke.  The ghost can move in straight lines and zigzags, or zoom off to Jupiter, or sink right down and sit under a mushroom. 

The ghost can see things upside down and inside out and listen in on the conversations of backyard squirrels and beluga whales.  Being dead, I presume, is endlessly entertaining, like the best streaming mystery and adventure series ever. And there are no commercials. No one tries to sell anything to the dead because they have discovered once and for all that the best things are free.

I wonder what it is like to be a ghost in a jaunty hat who has done whatever she came here to do and has transcended all the suffering? I try to imagine myself wandering around without a destination or a shopping list, inspiring people who are weighed down by gravity and desire.

It must be heavenly.

The ghost doesn’t speak, of course, but she is the best listener I have ever known.  I tell her everything.  I tell her who I am worried about (everyone), and how much weight I have gained (lots), and how much I crave spring, the taste of strawberries, and the color green.  She never comments, but if she could speak, I think she would say,

 “Well, that’s life, Karen!”

And it is, isn’t it?  Life is a constant craving for the next meal, or the next weekend, or a fruit that is out of season nine months of the year.  I often find myself approaching life like a bag of potato chips.  I am always reaching for the next one before I’ve finished chewing the chip in my mouth. I never seem to learn that the next chip tastes exactly like the last one – or that I can’t really reach and taste at the same time.

I am finally learning now, though. The other day, for instance, I ate an orange with such devoted attention that I forgot to crave strawberries. I forgot that strawberries were even a thing.  All I had was this one orange, and it was spectacular – like a sunrise in my mouth.

The ghost is silently changing the way I walk in the world. If I reach into the past, she fades away and becomes just a memory.  If I reach into the future, she disappears like a dream that will never come true. She is only present when I am truly present, here and now.

If you have grown disillusioned with life, I highly recommend finding a ghost to walk with. It doesn’t matter who it is.  It could be your mom or your grandfather.  It could be the old lady from down the street.  It could be a kid you once knew who never made it out of fourth grade.

It doesn’t matter how young or old your ghost was when they transcended, or how smart they were, or how many mistakes they made when they were human.  All ghosts are holy spirits, and they are all wise, and they can teach you more about life than human teachers or even Google.

My ghost is teaching me that we never really lose or gain anything – we just borrow things and return them.  It turns out that life is more like a library than a store. God doesn't sit on a bench with a gavel, or behind a counter with a cash register. God is strictly non-profit. God sits at the front desk of the library of life, checking out mysteries, thrillers, horror stories, romances, humor and self-help. (And cookbooks, of course, because God knows someone has to make dinner.)

My ghost is teaching me that if I dwell in the future or the past, I completely miss out on the life I came here to experience, which is only now.  It’s the potato chip already in my mouth, it’s the clothes I’m already wearing, it’s the person already beside me. It’s the room I am already in.

My ghost is teaching me that no matter how far I go in life, I will never find anything I want unless I find it here, because here is all there is.