Can people leave ghosts behind while they are still alive?
People who leave, leave holes. And we like to fill them. Just because we haven't seen someone in a while doesn't mean we've stopped caring what they think of us. Even people we see every day on TV, or read every night in books, we start talking to them in our heads as if they know us and are present. Absence is no excuse for neglect.
I think we shed ghosts the way we shed hair and dead skin cells. The universe collects them and makes them into something new. It can take a while. Sometimes, not so long.
Most of my friends, I don't see them that often. Not often enough. And yet I carry them around with me, thinking, gosh, Josh would love this story, or, I'll have to tell Larry about the woman in the plaid skirt I saw crossing the street this morning. She was totally our type.
But that's not right. I know I'm not going to tell Larry about her. It's more like I'll say, "Hey Larry, check out the girl in the plaid skirt. How do you think she's walking around like that in this weather?" I say this in my head and imagine he can hear it even though he's ten states away.
The internet is helping keep our ghosts alive. Rather, it keeps them attached to their sources. We can watch a video or read some stupid joke and immediately forward it to all our friends, and the next time we see them in the flesh, they'll really have shared this experience with us. (In most cases they probably won't have enjoyed it quite as much as we thought they would.)
We can twitter, sharing every thought and experience with our friends' bodies instead of their ghosts. We remain more alive and less alone.
I have dear friends who I see hardly at all. When I do, I'm alarmed by how much they've diverged from their ghosts. They no longer like the same things. Maybe they've styled their hair differently, added a few pounds, carved in a couple of wrinkles and painted in grey hairs. Maybe they're not as jolly as their ghosts are, or as consistently depressed. Most always they are a hell of a lot smarter.
But how can this be? They left those ghosts behind when they left me. I suppose if their ghosts seem like discarded, retarded children in comparison, the fault is all my own.
This is why it's kinder for people to die before they lose their minds. A ghost is an abridged version of its parent, easy for us to file away and store, to unpack when we have the need. When the source dies, we take the ghost out, dust it off, exercise it and invest it with solidity and significance.
But when the source changes suddenly and experiences some terrible decline, we're left clinging to that ghost. Sometimes we talk to the ghost right in front of them. This is terrible manners. Unseemly.
But we can't help ourselves. We can only ask the ghost, since it is the one with the capacity to do so, to forgive us.
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