There are capsules of memory that exist where people used to dwell. They have gone and we play in the haunted caves of their mannerisms and personalities. We’re convinced that they left some unfinished business that we determine to reclaim in our recollective spelunking. So we play with their ghosts in the dark caverns of memory – we dance with them, we chase them furiously, wrestle and pin them to the ground (we finally can pin them to the ground – take that), we smile at them furtively and pretend not to notice. All the while we play the game that seems to appease our conscience – recovering what they have left undone. If we can discover and fulfill their discarded destinies than perhaps the reality that we are alive and they are not is somehow justified.
He would have wanted it this way…
She always kept a rose garden in the back…
He was always telling jokes…
We hang on to them by giving them some incompletion. We drag them with us through our own insufficiencies. Ghosts on a leash. So then goodbye seems cruel and disrespectful. Move on – let go – they tell us. Impossible.
Tonight I walk in this rare Alberta fog with my ghosts and the mist on my face is enough…
Tonight the ghosts are easily recognized…
Friends with shining faces so clear in this dark cave…
Greetings are warm and familiar…
But the cave is crowded tonight…
Tonight I take up a mantel that has slid low on my shoulders…
Tonight life is heavier and more determined…
Tonight thousands of faceless unfinished lives are scurrying around in the cave…
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