Not long ago, after recovering from the flu, there was a happy ghost wandering through the hallways of our little cottage on the river. She paused at a hand-made miniature house made from clay, remembering when her son had gifted her with it years ago. There was her special collection of teas and shelf full of books she had loved.
She passed her hand over the colorful antique knit throw on the sofa—what a find that had been. The happy ghost chuckled over the secret the draped throw so artfully kept: a corner of the couch nibbled bare by one of the dogs when she was just a pup.
As the ghost meandered, she sighed in wonderment at what she had made of her life: nothing fancy–no mansion, no fame. But at the same time, so much more than she’d ever dared hope for: the sense of having fulfilled what she had come here to do.
Then, turning the corner, the happy ghost stubbed her toe and remembered that she was still here, embodied: felt her life come throbbing back into her from the sole up. And could not help but ask the question: “Walking around my house weeping for joy as if I had already passed…Is this normal?”
Perhaps on top of my own brush with mortality, I’ve experienced one death too many recently. A number seem to have slipped away while I was looking the other direction. The blustery professor who once held sway over so many receding into the shadows of an assisted living facility with nary a whisper to mark his final passage. A t’ai chi instructor admitted to hospice, only his inner circle in attendance to witness his decline.
The dramatic narratives of their lives had ceased demanding our attention, quieting down but not over: the distillation of their lives still radiating each particular and unique essence through the sheer conjuring of a name.
Becoming one’s self is not as easy as it seems–although these two and so many more who are gone but not forgotten, made it look effortless. Each released the domination of their egos—whether by choice or by circumstance—merging into the flow of life.
This is something one begins to practice every time one intuits that it no longer matters whether one is radiating one’s essence center stage or in an intimate salon; every time one savors the present moment in a pause, so redolent, so embracing of all of life, that the veil between ourselves and Presence dissipates. What was once impenetrable now seems as delicate and precious as gossamer.
So that was what the happy ghost was doing in my house: practicing. Having loosened the grip on so much of what I used to believe defined me, and yet something remains: the silken threads of my final attachments–that which has taken a lifetime to realize is most precious. Attachment to what? A ceramic model? A cup of tea? A nibbled couch?
No, not the things, themselves. Neither the pause nor even the promise of what is yet to come. But rather: how good it is to be alive.
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