The Ghosts within Our Souls

Last night, my three-year-old granddaughter spent the night with me. It was just the two of us. Her father, who has full custody, and her grandfather (my husband) left yesterday on a business trip.

My granddaughter has spent many nights here, in a room we call hers, but last night she slept in my bed for the first time. I swear that child has the sharpest bones God ever made, from her elbows to her knees—and the sweetest goodnight kisses.

For the last two-and-a-half years, I’ve been the only mother she has. Her own mother left her. This is out-of-the-ordinary in our family. I have eight other grandchildren, all with wonderfully present mothers, while this child has only an idea of ‘mother.’ And more and more, it comes to the forefront of her mind, almost like a ghost wandering around in her soul.

Don’t we all have those ghosts, though? None of us are one hundred percent satisfied with ourselves or our lives. At one time or another, don’t we all sense something missing, some ghost in our soul that would bring us to completion?

In the last pages of my historical novel, The Wind that Shakes the Corn, the main character comes to an understanding that “genuine completion is not meant to be found on this earth at all.”

There is no perfection here, no perfect family, or community, or country. Today is only a flash, a moment, in our everlasting lives, yet how we direct today’s moment of earthly life means a great deal. No matter if it is filled with the pain of loss, no matter if we don’t have what we want. We all bleed.

So I mean to make sure that my motherless granddaughter realizes this—and that no matter her out-of-the-ordinary circumstance, she can rise to become extraordinary.

This is no ordinary moment

But they who barely bleed will not acknowledge it,

This is no ordinary moment

But they who barely bleed will not acknowledge it,

You are not like them.

You hear our voice,

You invite us to your table, 

We, the ghosts within your soul.

You open your palms. “Sit here,” you say

And lay your fingers upon the polished wood.

You cross the rings of time.

Into perpetual presence,

Into the extraordinary accord between the seen and unseen,

Between the heard and unheard.

You celebrate

In the mirror of timelessness

The only real Truth

Where Past, Present and Future 

Are one.

This is no ordinary moment.

Copyright 2013 Kaye Hinckley