Talking to Ghosts
My sister died one year ago this week. There’s such immense pain in knowing she is no longer here. It stops me in my tracks. Takes my breath away. Still.
My cousin posts on Facebook about our great uncle who was the first to test pilot the B-52 Bomber. This is the great uncle after whom my dad was named, yet I have no memory of having ever learned his feats. I go to message Steph to see if she knew—she being the holder of our long term memories. And, then I remember. I cannot.
My dad calls after I unknowingly butt-dial him, the first time we’ve spoken since soon after Steph’s death. I have the urge to call her to fill her in and wonder together what signal the universe is attempting to send. But she will not be on the other end of the line.
My children are driving me nutty, bickering about screen time, stolen fidgets and books, how each won’t get out of the other’s room. I need to vent, to hear her tell me what angels we were to each other…that this behavior is a result of the other source of their gene pool. (Note: in actuality, she would recount all the ways we conspired against each other in our youth…and at times, in our adulthood, too.) But she’s no longer reachable…in that way.
I have clocked each episode in which my muscle memory response is interrupted by the recognition that there will be no “…” after I push “send” on a text, no soft and lilting “hey sweet Valley” greeting on the other end of the phone line. My sister is no longer of this physical world.
Yet, when I recollect myself, and this fact, I still talk to her. And she talks back.
For years now, I have been talking to ghosts—the ones who live inside of me who regularly storm the scenes of my life demanding to be seen and heard. I pushed them away for the longest time wanting desperately to lock them out of my theater of self. But the more I pushed and denied and pretended not to know the shady characters that somehow knew all the trap-door entrances to the stage, the more they doth protest. At some point, I came to realize that the gal donning the technicolor dream coat singing “It’s the Hard Knock Life” at the top of her lungs was not going anywhere, so I best turn on the ghost light, offer her a seat and a beverage, and get to know her. Soon, it was standing room only up in this theater of self, and I was handing out name tags to keep track of all the ignored and/or demonized parts of me who had something that they desperately needed me to hear.
So, my experience talking to the ghosts who know me well isn’t new. And maybe that’s why it feels so natural to talk to the spirit of my sister.
I have a huge blowout with my husband, and Stephanie is the first line of safety, of solace that comes to mind. She's the one I want to reach out to. So, I do. The conversation plays in my mind, in my heart. We say inappropriate things, laugh through the tears, she supports me in my sadness, and also points out the good in my husband, the validity of his perspective. She calls me out on my reactions, on my tendencies.
I am in the grip of my insecurities as I face into the uncertainty of launching a business, as I push against the urge for the safety promised if I were to step into a pre-defined role in an established organization with a guaranteed income. My voice carries on the wind, and hers back to me. She acknowledges my fears, my wounds—she knows them by heart herself—and also reminds me of who I am, who I am called to be. “You are Valerie Elizabeth Townsend. There is nothing you can’t do.”
Stephanie—the keeper of our memories, the witness to my becoming, one of the primary shapers of my earliest self and the companion to the context and circumstances that formed me as she, too, was forming—is here, surrounding me, in me. Her spirit recalls to me the ghosts of my self, and she helps me invite them onto the stage, into the light, to be seen and heard.
Stephanie’s life and death shifted my very composition in profound ways. In the beginning of my life, I was merged with her. I clung to her even as she pulled away as she attempted to discover herself. At some point, her pull was met by my push as we grew into separateness…me defining myself as that-which-she-was-not. We were different, distinct, and I thought we forevermore would be. In truth, throughout my life there were aspects of Steph that I wanted to claim as my own, to embody, to be. There still are, and I find myself leaning into those parts more and more now that she has moved beyond the veil.
It was four years ago that I began my shedding, my letting go of the things that had, in fact, served me well to that point in my life…but did no longer. Having stripped to nothing, I was intentional, methodical, about what and how I would cover up, and what felt important to leave bare, exposed, raw. I’ll admit, I felt uncertain bringing my unvarnished self to all aspects of my life. But, after Stephanie died and I began talking to her, something shifted. I began to claim as my own the part of her that was not ashamed of being uncovered.
She, like the spirits who live inside of me, has wisdom to offer as she evokes the me that was—replete with my values, my fears, my hurts—and the me that is unfolding, at times trapped for a spell in the costumes and scripts of my earlier roles.
In this too, her ghost accompanies me, revealing the lessons that she taught me in life and in the process of dying, that perhaps I could only fully receive once she was gone. And, I am changed.
