The ghosts come at unexpected times now.
The odd note in a song, the angle of a man’s smile, the familiar lilt in a laugh will suddenly open a floodgate of memories.
I’m instantly pulled back through time. Down the rabbit hole, I go. KERPLUNK! To awaken to moments rich with sights and sounds which overwhelm my senses.
I stroke, once more, the silky, smooth skin of my first born in awe and reverence, though she is now a grown woman with a child of her own.
The musky scent of the desert after a cleansing monsoon rain will sweep across my face, smelling so real it leaves me feeling giddy and disoriented.
Sometimes I’ll hear the gay voices of children splashing in the backyard pool on a hot summer’s day. Though I crane my neck looking for them, it is to no avail. They’re not there.
I fight to keep from crying whenever I taste, as I frequently do, the salty tears I used to lick off my lips after a bitter argument with HIM.
I endure with embarrassment hot flashes of excitement that scorch my flesh, leaving me wet and flushed, as my body recounts each tender kiss, each passionate thrust of lovers long gone.
It is a quirk of fate that if you live long enough, your memory will grow long, too. I have now reached a point on my journey where I understand the allure, the seductive appeal of the past—all too well.
Memories are like a siren’s song, calling us back to distant shores that will leave us bereft and broken if we sail toward them foolishly believing we can relive those golden moments.
Whatever treasures are to be mined will be found in the present. Yet it’s hard to resist the urge to revisit the past. It’s hard to ignore the nagging fear that the best of life is not in front of you, waiting to be discovered, but behind you in the ashes of the past.
It is, perhaps, this unshakeable fear, more than anything else that doomed Lot’s wife. Not even an angel’s warning of certain death and damnation could keep her from looking back—keep her from longing to return to what was being left behind.
