Visiting Ghosts: Writing about the Past

One of my current writing projects is an essay (or longer something... book? eep.) about faith and identity.  I can't write about becoming a Christ follower without writing about an ex-boyfriend I dated for almost two years during college, a guy I expected to marry someday.

It's hard to go back to journals and memories about this time of my life.  Things with E were never really bad.  He didn't abuse me or cheat on me.  We fell in love fast and hard and made each other the centers of our worlds.  It wasn't a horrible relationship, but it was an incredibly formative relationship.  In fact, as cooky as it sounds, I think if God hadn't intervened in his mysterious way, I could have married him, and I could have made it work.  I loved him so much  that he held the place of god in my life, for a long time.  But as my faith in God grew and expanded into the rest of my life, his lack of belief became an increasing source of conflict for us, among other differences that surfaced during the time we were together.  Eventually I had two worlds: There was my life when I was with him, and there was my life when I was not with him.  Things gradually unraveled for us until we finally split up.

It is easy to demonize people who have loved us--and hurt us--deeply.  We are quick to remember the times of conflict, the tragic and the painful, because to revisit the memory of when it was good is risky.  It's uncomfortable.  Remembering when you were happy with this person who is no longer a part of your life feels dirty.  It feels like you are cheating on your spouse, the person you've chosen to love for over a decade now, the person with whom you have built a real and true love story, a story of living through many trials already, and survived.

But in order to write the whole story, to give that person on the page three dimensions instead of the one dimension you remember best, I have to remember how deeply I loved.  Without remembering and writing out how great I felt when I was with him, why I loved him so much, the impact of that loss and the brokenness that trailed me afterward sounds artificial, sappy, melodramatic.  I want to be fair to E and in doing so, I will be telling a true story, not just a wounded half-truth.

E is a person who has never left my conscious.  People who have that deep of an influence on your formation as a whole human being leave deep indents, like the meteor that just cracked into Earth.  That impact might be traumatic, impossible to refill or repair.  But over time, that crater will be transformed and healed, never erased, just redeemed.  One of my best friends calls these seasons of life our "grace-bearers"-- a reminder of the grace and mercy extended by the Lion that never leaves our side.

And that's the story I want to tell.

Sydney Cast in Shadow

Sydney Cast in Shadow


The garden stroll before a matinee ballet
birds of paradise gawking these palms this lushness
this pristine park dustless alley
these streakfree storefront windows
this cloudless painless blue this skyline
etched with geometric concrete waves
jutting saucer tower arcing bridge
sailboat-speckled placid harbor this paper bag
soaked in grease from fish and chips

Me too far away to see
my blurred face bare legs fingers tugging skirt hem
neverending steps the opera house
perched at cresting point behind me

This map too small in scale its cartoon skyscrapers
outlandish fountain dozen golden arches architecture
arc and angles exaggerated too whimsical
to accommodate the shadowed blocks we walked
cabs we didn't wave sweaty footprints pressed to sidewalks
heels in hand this vast gap between where we were
and where we hoped to be.

The Swale

Roving feet get suctioned in the swale.
Mud leaches between laces and leather
before you see the depression coming.

The valley looked drier, but spring rain
and winter melt had no time to evaporate
or seep deeper into the earth, harmless.

This land rises up in such a way that dips
are unpredictable. Perhaps shallow cavities
will always be damp, hollows I dare not tread,

not even during the hottest drought.
Some swales will never drain enough
to step unburdened. The hiker

is swallowed, boots sucking heavy in muck.
Anxious hands quiver for help, unable
to reach down and untie my own shoes.

Revision of Hoarding Any Memory

Hoarding Any Memory
Come give me a smooch! - Richard Lingro, Sr.


You appear in a family picnic clip
fifty pounds heavier than I remember
and bearded. Come give me a smooch!
that scruffy kiss and heavy hug.

Lawn mower tractor pulls, greasy rags,
and polka music play, profound
around the fuzzy photos, figures distorted,
shorter, thinner, younger years away,

driving in a silver Grand Marquis. I hear
oldies music, feel stale, air-conditioned cold
pumped into the back of an old police car,
the grey upholstered seat where I sit

with permanently locked doors,
windows I can’t roll down.
We are visiting great-grandmother
at her grave where your dust will rest

next to your mother. What felt like hours
is only thirty minutes – did you know
we were so close? We planted flowers,
or maybe we poked a plastic wreath

above her headstone, or maybe
there was no leaving behind,
only standing, staring, shifting feet.
My husband yells at our daughter

and I’m embarrassed to have thought of you.
But mostly, I keep sitting by your bed, alone,
caressing your head, whispering prayers,
holding your hand as you breathe in,

and breathe out, and breathe in…
and I breathe in, and in, and in, breathe…
and then I’ve breathed you out,
an immense whoosh like the smooch goodbye

after the car door is opened, windows down,
off to the great lawn mower tractor pull in the sky.