Giving Up the Ghost

“There it is again!” Buck exclaimed in the dark as we lay in bed one night.

“What!?” I asked, confused.

“That sound! Don’t you hear it?”

“It’s just the rain,” I shrugged. “This is Seattle. It happens a lot here. A lot.”

Then, as if to contradict me, the sound stopped — suddenly. More suddenly than any cloudburst could. And certainly more suddenly than any Seattle shower ever would. A quick check out the window confirmed that the sidewalk surrounding the house was dry.

“See!?” Buck retorted. “It is not the rain!”

We had replayed the scene of this debate a few times in recent days, but this time it was obvious something was up. The mysterious watery sound could not be attributed to nature. I had lived in the house for so long I should have known every sound from within and without. It defied explanation. If it was coming from outside, what was the source? It couldn’t be the neighbor’s laundry or shower (not long enough), sink (too regular in its length) or toilet (too infrequent). And anyway, at my age I should know what running water sounded like, especially the sound of a toilet. This was different, baffling. Could it be a haunting? Some sort of water spirit that would not rest?

Maybe. It was not the first relationship of mine to be troubled by ghosts. Ever since leaving Damon, my partner of well over a decade, I was haunted by the past. Regretful of mistakes (both his and mine), I was never entirely able to get beyond the grief and find the closure that all those self-help books talk about. The closer I came to sharing real intimacy with another man, the more I’d have a sense that I was just imitating the real thing that I had once shared with my lost love. It felt like mockery or betrayal. I couldn’t ever be completely in the most intimate of moments without his ghost reaching out and grabbing me by the heart.

I thought about the water sound that seemed to come out of nowhere when Buck and I were in the bedroom. That was when I remembered: Damon was born under the sign of Aquarius, the water bearer. Coincidence?

I had already tried the traditional approach for laying a dead relationship to rest, namely psychotherapy. But dozens of hours (and hundreds of dollars) later, Damon’s ghost was still hanging around. If past relationships can haunt us like ghosts, maybe an old-fashioned ghost cleansing was the answer.

Name calling: My research turned up a number of techniques designed to help with “entity contamination.” For example, some sources say that you can invoke a ghost by calling it by name. To avoid that, I have attempted to eradicate from my speech all pet names once used for my former lover. It’s something like a practice carried on in ancient Polynesia in which the name of a chieftain could never be spoken after he died. This meant not only refraining from giving the name to newborn children but from even using the name as an ordinary word. So for example if a leader named “Chief Water” passed on, an entirely new word for H₂O had to be invented.

Fortunately the task before me isn’t so enormous. And in fact, it seems to have helped. Developing unique verbal intimacies with a boyfriend makes that communication special only to our relationship and doesn’t bring to mind any past pillow talk. I just hope I don’t have many more boyfriends as there are only so many variations of “honey bunch” and “cutie pie” in the English language.

Crystal queer: A couple of mediums quoted online advocate bringing crystals into your home to cleanse it of unwanted spirits. Amethyst seems to be a popular stone in this regard, but the sources also mention rose quartz, blue lace agate, obsidian, black tourmaline, and smoky quartz. But in my case, none of these would do. No, what I needed were coffee crystals. That’s right, the freeze-dried kind. Damon was a connoisseur of coffee and would bristle at the suggestion that we keep instant coffee in the house. What better way to ward off his ghost from the home, or at least the kitchen? I immediately added Taster’s Choice^® to my shopping list.

Blind sage: Another popular method of casting out unwanted spirits is smudging, the practice of igniting a bundle of sage and carrying it from room to room to cleanse the space with the ritual smoke. I have to admit I never gave this one a try. Apart from setting off my smoke alarms, I was pretty sure that burning sage would do little more than invoke the ghosts of Thanksgiving meals past. Admittedly, those family memories might send me running out of the house screaming. But I was hoping for something that would work on the ghost of my ex instead.

Confront and center: One of the most common pieces of advice dispensed by ghost busters is to address the ghost directly. Firmly and unemotionally take charge and explain to the ghost that it no longer needs to hang around and indeed is not welcome to do so. Apparently few ghosts are really alpha souls, and many respond well to this kind of leadership. It was tempting to implement this strategy by dialing up my ex and asking him, for starters, to stop living in the same neighborhood as me.

Unfortunately, this advice is intended for exorcising ghosts, not real people. And therein lies my problem. My ex is not dead. He’s a living, breathing reminder of what never was and never would be. The ghost I need to purge is in my own brain. Hell, it isn’t in me. It is me. And no amount of crystals or smoking sage is going to make me forget what I refuse to release.

Sometimes, say the mediums, ghosts linger because we keep them around. They have, or feel they have, unfinished business. And in some cases that unfinished business is our own unwillingness to let them go. But if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s this: Letting go doesn’t happen in one or two acts of exorcism. It’s a gradual process that is carried on day by day over the long haul. And so I keep going, learning a little every day to live in the now and say goodbye to the past.

I’m seeing some progress. Last night as I lay awake I noticed something: Silence. I realized that it had actually been weeks since Buck and I heard the ghostly water sound. Was the spirit exorcised for good?

Probably not. But I'm more confident now that its days are numbered. In the meantime, I hate long goodbyes.