Ghost Whisperer Grief Obsession
I am obsessed
with the Ghost Whisperer as though somehow my destiny is linked to Melinda’s at this crossroad. Of course, my therapist would say this is understandable: Melinda is the name of my mother whose apocalyptic judgments I’ve been running from most of my life. But that’s not it. I have a Ph.D. I’m not supposed to like TV, let alone be obsessed by a show my child ridicules me for watching on my DVR. (Yes, I tape it. I told you I was obsessed.) Still, why? I wonder. At first, I think I was trying to figure out why I haven’t seen my dead husband when I know many do and hesitate to talk about it. Evidently mine walked straight into the Light and didn’t look back except to connect through odd thoughts, dreams, birds, turkeys and snakes. But that’s a different story. What does a co-dependent do when her husband just up and dies at the same time the nest empties and she is left behind with absolutely no rapture, confused about how to proceed, feeling like a lost child in a darkling wood? Of course, Jesus and good pharmaceuticals save. This is a given. But curiously, it’s been Melinda who’s been my prophet through this grief, for she has taught me to fear not all the ghosts, to instead be open to what they have to say, and to help them to the Light because when you do, they’ll come back and protect you. It’s not a bad philosophy, really. As I struggle to figure out how to be a woman now left with all this sexuality and no husband, I see that apparently it doesn’t hurt to show lots of cleavage while wearing filmy nightgowns to bed and running your own antique shoppe. (Really???) Why all the boobs? Is this to signify that Melinda is the Supreme Mother with ta-tas full of the milk of divine compassion? You can’t miss what look like nursing breasts. Is she is the maternal goddess whose mission of mercy balances the world? Is she the mother I need and didn’t get? I can’t quite figure out this third-wave feminism I’m trying to embrace and still be faithful to God, while hearing the voice of MY dead grandmother asking me, “Where’s your undershirt?!?” because I was always supposed to wear one, even in July. (Obviously, I digress.) But here’s where life gets interesting: I started seeing my own ghosts, and now I’m on to them. The dark forces scare and trick you into believing that they are more powerful than they really are so that you’ll despair and hide piecemeal within their pain until the hopelessness your doubt engenders creates the reality it desires. They work by force, manipulation, hidden control like puppet masters that we women, just wanting to be taken care of like a child’s beloved doll, allow, emptying ourselves of our own desires believing they're not that good anyway. This I learned from my mother . . . and faculty meetings. (Now I know why dolls creep me out and always have. I was one, voiceless except when anxiety left me Chatty Kathy with Tourette’s while someone else pulled the string.) Thus I objectified myself and condemned others for it when they didn’t care the way I wanted. And I continued Its chaos. But now I see that what I fear is what these ghosts of fear do-- separate parts, compartmentalize, disorder until all is lost or inadvertently thrown away. (Is this Jung I see before me?) I fear what I’ve become and never wanted: Angry. Alone. Afraid. My mother. But I know from exorcisms that Jesus does indeed save. And I have seen the Light I swim in like a fish astonished to see water for the first time. In the busyness of noise that is the darkness, the Light that simply is just quietly shines, illuminating, warming enlivening, growing, empowering the other to be fully who they are and embody hope in Life, saying no to what objectifies and destroys-- patiently restoring and ordering and polishing the tarnished and putting away the doll’s broken beating heart by wrapping it in tissue paper for protection until it is time to take it out and share sacramentally again-- In short, by working through without condemnation but only firm care that here I AM for the good of all, myself included. And that something as flimsy as tissue of care and light of being is what lasts past the last flicker of TV late at night. The rest is just scare tactics born of frustration that refuses to accept “Not my will but thine” is what shines. (And no, you may not milk the cow until you commit to care for her as who she is, trotting free in fields of grace, happy to come home, udders full, after battling ghosts, at the end of the day.) © 2012 Tess Lockhart. All rights reserved. |