Ghosts All Together

I am up past my bedtime, rocking and reading in an oversized chair on my balcony, listening to the rain fall on this Hallow’s Eve. In 30 minutes, it will be All Saints’ Day and another two hours from then, we’ll set our clocks back. I had exactly two Starbursts – one pink and one red – to celebrate this veil thinning and time passing. I’m glad we have an extra hour to honor the dead. Remember.

I’m not sure consciousness dies, though. I’d like to believe that we do not lose our loved ones forever, but rather, simply connect with them without the pleasure of using our senses. It may not be any different from any other parting of ways we take in life where we are no longer sharing our presence. We exist in memory. Still – dead or alive, we feel gratitude and grief, joy and sorrow.

Alternatively, what happens if you find yourself dying in someone else’s company? I mean, what if your soul is suffocating inside the job, relationship, city, etc.? That must be pretty trippy to experience, the lights going out. Who’s to say we aren’t jack-o’-lanterns sitting on the steps of someone we considered home, whom we once trusted with a knife? Maybe we should also recall the graveyards we’ve played in, and how we almost lost ourselves but didn’t, or maybe we did and became ghosts altogether. Maybe that’s worth honoring too because somewhere, someone got a piece of us.

It’s okay if those pieces died when we gave them away. They may be very much alive to whoever has them now. In this way, consciousness is an exchange of energy that allows us to be present in everything everywhere all at once. It’s a nice way to think about it.

You know, I used to grieve all the lost parts of myself because even though I knew the minute they died, I didn’t know where they went. It’s unsettling, purgatory, that place of perpetual purification and preparation for only God knows what. All I need to know now is that I don’t live there anymore.