10
Share on bsky
View this post on Instagram
Chasing Ghosts
For some of us, grief is responsible for evolving and altering our stories.
The common notion that over time grief subsides or becomes more subdued is…complicated.
We like to think that ache or longing eases with time, but, for some of us, the experience is not as easy to map out.
There are those among us who suffer great losses and find a process or path forward with their lost loved ones at ease behind them. They find the tools they need to forge on with their memories largely situated in their past, like a rear view mirror. Some learn to venture forward comfortably (not to suggest it’s ever easy) holding a place for their person, or their people, in the chapters of their lives they’ve evolved and moved on from. There is so much beauty in all the different ways we grieve and remember those who shaped and shared with us.
In contrast, for some of us, the experience and navigation of grief is the opposite and our people are a part everything in front of us. They are part of our plans, part of our daily decisions, and really, the essence of our future. They are what we are chasing.
I have a close friend that I met over fifteen years ago. We bonded as young women over a shared profession, having young kids and common interests in the ways many friendships form. But for us, what may have taken our relationship to another level was what another friend of hers coined “the dead mom’s club.”
I have heard that only the bereaved can truly understand the bereaved.
For both of us, in those years, our grief was new, raw, scalding hot, and at times, all encompassing.
What a thing to share while kids dressed up as Jedis and snuck fruit snacks from cabinets, while their moms snuck extra glasses of wine—many evenings became nights and a deep friendship formed. She and I both had complicated mothers and we told stories, shared laughs, and cried as we got to know these women through each other. These deeply missed women who were deprived of the gift of knowing those young, spirited, wild souls staying up way past their bedtimes, while their heartsick moms tried to put together motherhood without them.
My friend celebrates her mother’s birthday.
I remember all those years ago, there was a big climbing rose bush in her yard that bloomed around her mom’s summer birthday. One year, they were going to be out of town and she was bitter and angry to not be home on this sacred, marked date. It was having to be away from the rose bush that had set her off because it had become a kind of spiritual link that I did not yet understand.
When loss leaves us so empty, there are those of us who grasp at anything to fill those longings and for her, that rose bush, on that special day, brought a connection she yearned for so desperately that I could hear it in her voice.
I could feel it from her bitterness in missing that chance, that opportunity, that possible sacred moment where it all connected for some fleeting, magical, possible moment.
Fast forward and those same kids are teenagers and young adults. And now, that same friend has the most glorious, beautiful flower garden I’ve ever seen. It’s like a magazine feature or a scene from a movie—every color, butterflies everywhere, lingering hummingbirds, and it blooms all season. Meticulously planned blooms waiting for a magical intersection. And I know why.
She’s chasing her mother.
The phrase, “chasing ghosts,” comes from her.
Could there be an elusive moment, on a Sunday evening in July, as the moon rises and the fireflies come to dance through her blooming roses and dahlias that she can feel her mom? What I know, because I’ve watched it as we’ve aged together, is that that sacred moment of blissful connection with the other side happens just often enough for her to keep chasing.
When I need to chase, I hike.
I found that feeling (as difficult as it is to describe) when I needed it so badly, over and over, when my kids were little and I was surrounded by demands, obligations, constant feelings of not doing enough—overwhelmed by calendars, to do lists, and trying to keep my kids in line. And keep myself in line. Or really, keep anything in line.
We lost my dad not long after my mom, and keeping anything in line was rarely his priority, at least not as a father. In those hikes—short hikes, local hikes, or longer, more adventurous hikes—he had a way of reminding me, somewhere in the trees and the stillness, as he’d guide all of us off the trail, to stop with the “shoulds” and just be.
I still chase that feeling. I’ll chase it until my last breath. It keeps me both in, and out, of line. Exactly where I want to be.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched how my little family chases the loss of my brother, who died far too young two Septembers ago. My youngest son has evolved into a passionate Chicago Bears fan. It evolved organically over the weeks following a football season funeral with an orange Bears jersey hung over a casket and eulogies ripe with Bears anecdotes. The Chicago Bears have a new, young quarterback my brother (who wore a velvet purple tuxedo to his high school prom) would have loved for his fearless, colorful and authentic presence in the NFL. Is it my young son chasing my brother through a fingernail-painting quarterback, or is it me? Does it matter?
And boy, I have chased him. I have chased my brother through Croatia, and more recently through epic, life-invigorating stories of travel, literature, and music with my kids. They have learned more about him as a ghost than they knew of him in his years as a person, which breaks my heart, but brings us all closer. That chase has a long ways to go.
Although over the last few months, I have paused and wondered if it isn’t really my brother’s ghost chasing my kids rather than the other way around.
I am similarly honored to chase the close friend I lost to cancer through the remarkable, inspiring daughter she left behind. She is a lot to keep up with and an adventure that keeps me guessing. The truest of blessings.
Loss and grief can paralyze us.
There are those who have allowed death to smother them, and those who bottle up hopelessness and sorrow. For me, I will continue to make my ghosts—and that chase—a part of my life, and of those I love.
The heartbreak of loss I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but the chase has been the most honest part of my life.
~
Read 1 comment and reply