The ghosts of ourselves

i read a little piece in my latest bOOk last night (Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles de Lint) and this small story within the story was about 'the ghosts' of ourselves that we leave behind...

"...But then that was what life is all about, isn't it? The choices we make and how the people we are can be left behind when we make those choices because they're no longer a part of our story. For many, not even the words remain to remind us of them. There are only all those ghosts of who we were, wandering around for anyone to see. Except ourselves.
Because we rarely see our own ghosts, do we?
As he settled in the back seat of his cab he found himself wandering about his own ghosts, how many there were, haunting the places he had once been, those products of choices he'd made that he would never meet, telling stories he would never hear..."



and while i was reading this i started thinking about the ghosts of my life...
and i found my hand had wandered unconsciously to the now vacant spot upon my chest where my breast had once been and i had thoughts in my head that whispered to me about the memories that had been etched there... and i thought about the 'ghost pains' i have been having lately in this now 'disappeared spot'... and i remembered with a kind of sadness how this breast had had a nipple with a slight 'kink' that had made this the 'preferred' breast feeding side... and then in my minds eye, the small white scar appeared, that was on the base of that nipple that had been caused by my first born who had insistently chewed upon it during teething ... So many memories had been stored there in that flesh i thought and i hoped silently, not for the first time, that somehow that piece of me may have been given some small moment of respect and blessing before being cast away forever leaving only these ghost memories...



And now my thoughts drift to where the other 'ghosts' of my life might now be wandering... ?
The ghost of that teenager sitting on the pier at the beach with the hopes of ~love~ in her heart for that dark haired boy...
and the young artist who went on to pursue a more commercial artistic career...
and the young woman who chose hotel management instead of ~love~
and that single girl...

...Ghosts all of them of other pathways touched and sometimes slightly tasted, but never pursued... and who knows, as Charles suggests, maybe they wander still, living other lives, having other thoughts and sometimes maybe wondering about me?

...Perhaps we are all surrounded by such ghosts?