Life With A Ghost

Remember the movie The Ghost and Mrs. Muir? Currently, I’m Mrs. Muir.

Greg doesn’t manifest himself to me. He doesn’t need to. Forty-two years of memories, good and bad, have their own spirits that manifest daily.

This past weekend was the roughest time I’ve had since Greg died. Even abandoning Travis Tritt’s music for a day, and listening to other music like The Grass Roots and Steppenwolf, among others, didn’t help. There would be some snippet of a line in any song that reminded me so much of Greg that tears were quick to follow. So I returned to Travis’s music.

Housework didn’t help; I am not a housekeeper and Greg often fussed about that. Driving didn’t help; Greg and I did so much riding around together that the sight of blacktop nearly brought me to tears.

Sunshine, clouds, a glorious sunset, the cats -- even the ones Greg never met, Ford pick-up trucks, cattle, trees, rocks -- anything around me wreaked havoc on my emotions.

I should’ve known something was coming as starting Thursday afternoon I have not been wanting to be at home. Nothing seems “off” or out of place, not in the house, nor the garage or other buildings, nor any of the outdoors. Maybe loneliness has accumulated, though I’m not really wanting to be around other people -- at least not to communicate with them. I do not know what the problem is.

I do know that I had a rough weekend. I didn’t sit alone and mourn. I dined out -- Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. I chatted with a few people and looked at mobile homes. But the sorrow was there, lurking under my skin, waiting to break loose and bring me to tears.

I live with the ghosts of the life I shared with Greg. Reminders are always there. Even if all the things that Greg and I had, and all the places we frequented together, quietly disappeared in the middle of some dark and stormy night, the memories will remain.

Not only am I living with the ghost of Greg, I’m surrounded by hundreds of ghosts -- called memories.