Ghost

Some people are haunted by their pasts. I am haunted by places.

A week ago I returned to my hometown. Not much has changed. The roads still go to where they used to go. The high school is bigger and more pretentious, but in ways it has actually improved. The town still has the noxious cloud of smug hovering over it. I am a bit surprised that the smug machines (use your imagination) haven't yet suppressed all forms of life both animal and vegetable in the area. Some shops have closed, but others have opened. All in all, things are just as I left them almost ten years ago.

I haven't seen a single soul I know outside of my family. But I remember. I go to places and I see events that happened there. My mind supplies the people, the actions, the words into the setting. I do more than remember: I reexperience. People that I have neither seen nor spoken to since the day we graduated high school I meet again for birthday parties, prom pictures, funerals, football games, and church events. It is eerie, and I do not like it.

But I knew it was coming. Last summer I returned to my undergraduate institution for my mentoring. The same thing happened. I filled the classrooms with the people from my freshman New Testament class and relived the Matthew lecture that literally saved my faith. I recall Daniel, the guy who sat in front of me and my future roommate, leaning back in his desk expecting me to give him the answer to the last question Dr. Brummet asked like I always did. It made him look good and kept me flying under the radar. But that day I didn't respond. I was thunderstruck by what I had encountered... but what doesn't quite cover it, does it? No. I encountered a who that day... not in the Dr. Seuss sense, but it was a person that I had to reckon with. Not an idea. Not a proposition. Not a dictum. I had to deal with Jesus Christ himself.

Similar events happened that summer. I relived Christmas parties and welcome week events. I sat in the Honors House living room and watched Sarah Faith try to play Zelda. I played Smash Bros. with Jordan as we ate lunch before going to Christian History. I joined in a game of Settlers of Catan with many good friends.

But those golden memories give way quickly as I am here in Florida now. I look out these French doors at the incessant waves and see people walking along the beach. Jutting out like an aberration into the sea is the pier. And now I relive another scene. The sun is setting. We had walked the length of the pier to try and see dolphins. Drenched with sweat, we all stop to take a picture. Just then, my mother catches sight of a dolphin and we observe it carefully for a few minutes. After we break formation, I walk just ahead of my grandmother and her friend. I hear her say, "I will never be back here again." And I thought it was odd then... but not now. Now I hear a woman who knew her fate and had begun to reckon with it. As the tide came in that night, I didn't know what the next year and a half held for us.

As the tide comes in this morning, I think back to the words I spoke over her coffin. I think back to the words I spoke to those gathered that morning to lay her in the earth. I think back to the granite marker that is all that remains of her in this world. Even though nearly three years have passed, I live with regrets: not being there with her, not spending more time with her, not putting off seminary for a semester... and a hundred others.

Though I have replayed the scene of that weak, emaciated woman fumbling towards the garage to bid me farewell forever a thousand times, I still cannot get it out of my mind. Three years have passed, each better than the one that came before it. Many good things have happened, and many tragedies have happened. Life is not always kind. The tides rose and rescinded, and all will be well again.

Places haunt me. Returning to a place I know yet feel disconnected with is not good for me. Maybe I need to quit moving around so much, plant some roots, and make a home. I am tired of leaving people that I love. Maybe it is time to settle down somewhere. Maybe my wanderlust is finally satisfied.