For someone who has always been considered to be a quick learner, I have certainly missed the mark on some important things.

When people are gone, they are gone. No matter how many times I open the big, heavy old wood door that leads into the kitchen that smells of the woodsmoke of my earliest childhood, no one is going to come around the corner. About five years ago, I wrote about being there, closing my eyes and letting the ghosts come out. I guess I thought that was enough, that seeing in my mind life as it used to be would somehow keep it from actually not being there anymore. My imagination is too good. The rooms are empty, despite the ghosts that I actually see now with my eyes open.

They are like clouds. Oddly enough, I can glimpse myself sitting there doing algebra homework at the big round table. I am a misty ghost, too. And what the place is now is just an empty place. I don’t know what took me so long to realize this; maybe it really started when I walked out of Room 420 at North Ridge Nursing Home on May 12th. I followed Kathryn’s last exit and on my way, I thought of Clara who had been there until January and was also gone. I think I had been seeing her ghost as well during the last few months. I couldn’t close that door and keep the room unused as if waiting for the past to come back.

Here we are contained in these small bodies, with our awareness in a small part of that body and we are capable of feeling utterly crushed. How can perception be so overwhelming? Maybe only some part of life goes on, or perhaps some of us just can’t grow old, can’t accept the passing of time.

Right now I could use a furry shoulder to bury my face in, but he’s gone too. I think, though, that maybe one more time, I’ll close my eyes and let his ghost come out.