"Do you think our loved ones hear us, do they know...?" the grieving widow asked Patrick Jayne on the TV series The Mentalist. He, a widower himself, shook his head sadly from side to side and said "No." And she went away sad.
No one should go away sad. And it disenchants me that they paint Patrick Jayne as so handsome, so witty, and yet so cynical and un-spiritual. Because he was a former fraud doing seances for money and allegedly reading peoples' minds, when he uses his unique insight and keen powers of observation to help the CBI team solve cases, they portray him as an atheist since he has left all that "spiritual stuff" behind. It's throwing the baby out with the bath water. I hate it when handsome men are atheists. It's like being given an ice cream cone with sherbet, not ice cream, in it: sweet, but not filling at all.
He did get one thing right when he said "all people are spiritual beings." It bugs me when people say "I'm not religious; I'm spiritual." Actually every single human being is spiritual. We in-spire (breathe-in) and we ex-pire (breathe out). The Greek word pneuma means: wind, breath, spirit. From this word we get "pneumonia" and "pneumatic." When we run and grow weary, we say, "I am just a bit winded." When we stop breathing, when we let our spirit leave our body, the very essence of who we are lives on... somehow, somewhere.
The Somehow and Somewhere is defined by the various religious systems based on the teachings of their religious leaders. You and I may disagree on who is right. But in the long run, I think we might all agree that we entrust ourselves individually and corporately to the Mercy of God. And it's kind of intriguing when you think about it that we believe how we live as people - good or evil - has a role in where we end up, but we never really think of ourselves as bad enough to not end up in a good place. (The margin of erroneous thinking here is the mistaken people who have a mental image of hell being "fun" and say they want to go there. Hell's preview on earth is the disorder and disruption of the flow of goodness here on earth - just listen to the morning news and feel how tiring it is to hear of yet another shooting/ stabbing/etc. What sane person would want that for eternity?!)
October is the time of year people turn their attention to the passing of friends and relatives. Maybe it is because here on the East Coast the trees shed their leaves in preparation for the long, cold winter. There is a bitter-sweetness to this transition, and yet what I've begun to do to cope (I hate winter.) is to think forward to the joys of next spring. I plant bulbs and hope the squirrels won't ferret them out. I make a note of what outside summer equipment needs to be repaired, replaced or re-purposed. I conjure up craft projects to keep me busy. I think of the ocean vacation I left behind two months ago and anticipate the next time I will put my chair in the sand and my fancy sunglasses on my face. I think of the litters of puppies to come in the Spring. In short, I try to put myself in the mindset of Maria vonTrapp in The Sound of Music when she sings the classic, "These are a few of my Favorite Things." It is a decisive mental exercise so that I don't get sucked into the winter's clutch and stay there: The tricky driving. The earlier mornings. The snow blower battery that doesn't make it through the whole job. The cabin fever with 3 dogs, 2 cats and 4 million dust bunnies. The way one room in my house never quite gets warm like the rest of the house. The way the wind howls when I am trying to sleep and not worry if the power is going out. Those are all my reasons for hating winter, and hate it, I do. Autumn is the natural transition into winter, just as Spring is the natural transition out of winter. If the life of the people we love mirrors the going into winter, I trust the mercy of God that there is a Spring time, a coming out of winter as well. But what about winter?
What started out as an opportunity to honor the memory of those who have gone before us got pirated. The first historical Christian Church (the Catholic Church) celebrates All Saints Day, followed by All Souls Day. Honoring the holy ones and the ones not as super-holy but still loved by God for slugging it out down here on a daily basis, is good for us. It turns our attention to the End of the Earthly game and towards the spiritual continuance. What we do here matters. Who we are here matters. What we believe here matters - for out of that believing flows our deeds, how we live here. Yet, somehow the Halloween tradition started and the attention shifted in a worldly way to ghosts, goblins, and things that go "bump" (slash, rip, tear, etc.) in the night. What a horrible shift.
When we feel the presence of spirits that are not at rest, instead of praying for them to be at peace, as we should do, knuckleheads make party games out of it and keep trying to bring them back. Sometimes when you are trying to bring back Aunt Mildred, you end up getting an imposter demon instead - but I will leave the study of demonology for someone else to tell you about. Why is it we turn everything that is sacred and important that we don't really understand into a game? Perhaps we trivialize things to feed our curiosity. I don't know. But I want to propose this: maybe sometimes the things we call ghosts, the memories we have, we create to fill the empty spaces that real people left behind. A lot of humans are not really good at dealing with emptiness.
I drive by the apartment where my friend Mike lived before he moved south to be of help for his sister during her time of need. Every time I look at that building I think about him inside his apartment. Someone else surely lives there by now, but not in my mind.
I can't drive through the neighborhoods in Dewitt where my close friends used to live. One of them has passed away and I am missing her a lot lately. Another couple has moved south to Florida and all I can remember is the happy times having picnics on their back porch, or watching Mother Angelica on tv and eating ice cream together on a hot summer's evening. It's as if that house has echoes of them and our happiness all through it. No one else's car belongs in that driveway.... the driveway of the friend who threw me a surprise party when I left a job I loved because I needed a new direction. I think of the double-wide home my other friend used to live in. No one else's car belongs in her driveway either. Or does it?
When my dear uncle passed on, he left a vacant house literally right next to my parents' home. During its empty days, it was hard to drive by it and not feel the hollowness. One member of the family, feeling all of the angst I reference in the previous paragraph, said, "I wish it would just burn to the ground. I have so many happy memories there." She was serious. She couldn't see anyone else being there, because that was where he belonged.... at that time. I encouraged her to spin it this way: "Just hope for some young couple to come and buy that house and raise their family in happiness there. That way the happy just keeps going on...." When my grandparents' house was for sale on the market, the good people that put in a purchase offer sent a letter to my parents saying how they wanted to make that house a happy place once more, something to that effect. It was so warm, so kind to have someone intent on honoring the memory of those who had gone before.
The empty houses are places where our minds place ghosts. (not that there aren't the Other kind of ghosts, again, story for another day). I am at the point in life - which I am not liking too much - where everything reminds me of something or someone that used to be alive. The ghosts are everywhere. So seeing them on the neighbor's lawn down the street as a decoration is kind of just an annoying cartoon to me. I am hoping for happier days and new memories. I am longing for springtime, Easter eggs and bunnies and the hope of rebirth. I am so "done" with ghosts and winter, even though it is not here yet. But I do know this, sometimes I am guided by a thought, or an unseen hand. Sometimes the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart are heard. It is then that I know that Patrick Jaynes was handsome, but wrong, Yes, they CAN hear us. They want to. They are the home team just waiting for us to finish running our bases. And as for me, I will run so as to win the race.
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