I would like to be a ghost
I'll take my autonomy with me to the afterlife, thankyouverymuch.
I mean this with utter and complete sincerity: I want to become a ghost when I die.
When I was a kid (and as an adult, honestly) if I thought too hard about heaven, it gave me a swoopy feeling in my stomach. And not the good kind. The “that sounds terrible and terrifying” kind. The idea of living forever and ever in one place, spending all your time kneeling and worshipping and singing songs to this ancient being, (who my mind imagined as a stern blob of light that was too bright for you to look at directly and so Jesus had to stand between you like a living pair of those paper glasses you wear so you can look at an eclipse without burning your retinas to a crisp), sounded like a really bad plan that someone who doesn’t know the definition of fun made up.
I only stopped feeling terrified of this future, unending existence (that I supposed was better than the alternative eternal torture in the basement run by the guy with horns, who you could probably look at but who might stab your eyes out with his pitchfork) when I got the idea that perhaps heaven had a teleportation clause. As in, your spirit self, your afterlife body that’s somehow your old body but new and not a body at all, could fulfill its daily quota of worship and then you could just pop off to anywhere in the world just by thinking of it, or perhaps by traveling on some superfast heavenly light rail that moves around the universe at light speed.
This was comforting because it meant that I could still be a good Christian who looked forward to heaven like I was supposed to. It meant I could live on forever while not being tortured and also having a good time doing things I actually wanted to do instead of following someone else’s never-ending itinerary. And best of all, I could experience all the things I didn’t have the time or money or bravery to experience while I was alive.
I could travel to Paris and Berlin and Prague and Morocco and Copenhagen and Dublin and Edinburgh and New Zealand and Tokyo and the Galápagos Islands. I could go snowboarding and scuba diving and climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower or the Space Needle. Because you don’t have to worry about the price of plane tickets or sharks or breaking every bone in your body or plummeting to your death when you’re already dead.
In other words, I think I always wanted to be a ghost.
Ghosts get a bad rap what with all the talk of “unfinished business” and “hauntings” and being labeled as “demons” by evangelicals. And perhaps some ghosts are cranky or evil just like some people are cranky or evil. But what if, for the great majority of ghosts, their unfinished business is just…living?
What if that ghost in the creepy hotel was just trying to have a nice vacation when some YouTuber with a night-vision camera, a catalog of sound effects and a flair for the over-dramatic rudely interrupted? What if the spirit on the balcony of that rundown, ivy-covered Victorian house was just rehearsing their part in an all-ghost theater troop’s rendition of Romeooo and Booliet? What if the specter at the top of the lighthouse is just casually taking in the view of the sea?
What if I’m not haunting your library, I’m just trying to meet my goal of reading every book ever written?
To be clear, I’m not against haunting. In fact, when I am a ghost, I think I shall have a to-haunt list, including but not limited to misogynists; racists; homophobes; transphobes; racist, homophobic, transphobic comedians; racist, homophobic, transphobic politicians; book-banners; Karens; TERFs; people who protest outside abortion clinics; billionaires; and fascists.
I think being a ghost sounds fine and good. Even if it means continuing to bear witness to the stupid suffering caused by stupid people and their stupid actions. Because instead of distancing myself from it on some ethereal cloud surrounded by holy spirits looking down their noses at earth and saying “That’s what you get for not asking Jesus into your heart,” I could go around causing good ghost trouble or whispering encouraging things into ears that need encouraging. Giving fascists heart attacks AND giving anxious small ones warm ghost hugs because I am a ghost and I contain ghost multitudes.
And if the world and its pain becomes too much for my tender ghost heart I will blip into the middle of the forest and surround myself with nature and soft mosses and soft animals until I feel my ghost body soften like I am nothing but a sheet with holes for eyes. And I will stare up through the branches of the trees with my sheet hole eyes and gaze at the stars and fill all my hollow spaces with deep breaths of damp air purified by all the green things that surround me. And I will let the ferns hug me with their tendrils and I will complement the mushrooms on the loveliness of their frilled caps and I will boop the noses of the bunnies and give a few threads from my sheet body to the nesting birds and nod shyly at their thankful chirps because it is the least I can do when they have welcomed me into their woods.
I will lie there until I have absorbed the energies of the earth, the vibrations of the earthworms’ wiggles and the hum of mycelium conversations below, and when I have regained my fortitude, I shall return to my little ghost life and my little ghost haunts and my little ghost acts of resistance. And as long as you’re not an asshole, you will have nothing to fear from me.
Yes, I think I’d like being a ghost.
It’s funny how the things I was taught to be afraid of are actually the things I want to be. In life, and in death.
📚 Little Weirds by Jenny Slate. After having it on my TBR for years, I finally started listening to the audiobook and have been reminded, once again, how books will find you at just the right time. (So don’t ever let anyone shame you for buying books and not reading them right away.) It is also reminding me that words can be silly and poetic and have something serious to say, all at the same time. And it was a huge inspiration for this post.
💜 This post from my dear friend (and incredibly talented author) Cindy Baldwin, on living and finding joy as an act of resistance.
🧶 Crocheting! The older I get, the more I find myself returning to the things that I loved in my youth. (Yes, as a teenager in the 90s I was super into crocheting.) For every book I read this year, I’m crocheting a granny square in the colors of the book’s cover, and I cannot adequately express how happy it’s making me.
Ohhhh I love this so very very much. It made me tear up. 💜💜💜 I love this afterlife vision, and it is stunningly, perfectly written.
Have you watched Dead Boys Detectives? I think you'd enjoy it! On Netflix