On Living With Ghosts

The author with his late wife and son, in one of the last photos that was taken of her.
My 7-year-old son Dash tells me he hopes ghosts are real. He thinks that is the only way he will ever see his mother Kit again. I don’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife in the classic sense. But I think the energy that someone puts into the universe is a living and breathing thing that continues to exist well after they are gone. So, my wife Kit is always with me.
I spent a while after she died in the summer of 2017 trying to hold onto the life we built together in Brooklyn while chasing her ghost. I thought I could stay the course we carved out and keep the pace we set. But, nothing about loss is linear or logical. Most of that time was just me and Dash together on the bottom of the ocean trying to find a life raft that eventually led us to Los Angeles. What I’ve learned is this: There was this other guy named John Darcy. He looked just like me and lived in Brooklyn. One day, he just disappeared. And then a little while later another John Darcy emerged in Los Angeles. And he was compelled to tell the other John Darcy’s story until one day it occurred to him that they were somehow the same person. It’s only then that I realized: the ghost was always me.
I remember posting a photo to Instagram Stories of me and Kit at Capitale on Grand Street in New York City from the night we met on Halloween 2003. I scored it with Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.” Cause every time it rains, you’re here in my head. Like the sun coming out. My friend Bradford texted from New York at the time to ask if I was having a tough day. Without pause, I texted back letting him know not necessarily. A lot of my sharing of intimate moments is a celebration, I wrote. Proof that this love did indeed happen. And I’m grateful. It’s not always about what I lost. Sometimes I reminisce on the magic I experienced and feel incredibly fortunate. He texted back saying it reminded him of something Toni Morrison said about losing her son. She said that she welcomed the grief because it reminded her that he was real.
It’s only then that I realized: the ghost was always me.
I think back to our first kiss—Saturday July 17, 2004. It seems like just yesterday Kit and I rode that Q train together from Chinatown to Coney Island drinking vodka lemonades out of Nalgenes. The way the sun was setting over Coney Island as Death Cab For Cutie performed “Transatlanticism.” Sounds like a cliche now but that’s how our love happened. I’ve found that if you’re lucky, sometimes life is like a movie.
So many memories sporadically flash in my mind. An uplifting text from Kit in May of 2012 after multiple rounds of interviews and not getting a job that I had wanted so badly. Just her unwavering certainty and laser focus on process. And her belief in me: I love you. It’s the Year of the Dragon and I know good things are going to happen for you, all in good time. The last Valentine’s Day card I gave her in 2017. It was inscribed with verse from 1 Corinthians 13: love never ends. The image of Kit standing in the corridor of our apartment in Park Slope the morning of Monday June 26, 2017. Not knowing at the time that this was good-bye, forever.
Back in February of this year while on a training run for the Los Angeles Marathon, I lost my footing midway through a 14 mile run and went head and shoulder first into a steel pole. I never lost consciousness but had a series of bumps on my head and a shooting pain in my shoulder from the impact. After the fall, I walked from the running path to a nearby restaurant to assess the injury. It was clear that I should get it checked out. I went home to shower and eat and then headed to a local Urgent Care. The doctor who saw me there was not overly concerned about the bumps on my head but wanted me to get an X-Ray for my shoulder. Towards the end of the appointment, I casually mentioned that my right nostril had been running excessively with clear fluid and I was sneezing a lot. The doctor said I needed to get to an emergency room immediately—I may have fractured my skull.
Even though I cannot feel her presence, Kit is inexplicably watching over me.
On the way to UCLA in Westwood, my life was flashing before my eyes. All I could think about during this time was the things I needed to finish. Later in the exam room, I remember the look on the doctor’s face as he assessed my head injury trying to rule out a skull fracture. The tone and tenor of his voice was reminiscent of the cardiologist’s I spoke with when Kit was in a coma fighting for her life at Weill-Cornell: your wife is very sick. All the while in the exam room I was thinking: I can’t die on Dash. I can’t die without completing the book.
The tests came back negative.
Kit’s dad David recently visited us in Los Angeles. At the end of his trip, Dash and I drove him to the airport. While saying our good-byes, Dash told his grandfather that he loved him from the backseat window of our car. As David turned his head to walk back to embrace him, he casually smiled and it took my breath away. I never see Kit in my dreams. But for a split second at the Southwest terminal at LAX, Kit was there. It was another reminder—David’s smile is Kit’s smile. Everything connects.
I think about something a friend recently said to me—during a moment of self-doubt, she said she’s never known me to let fear control my life. I instinctively told her it’s because I’m protected—that even though I cannot feel her presence, Kit is inexplicably watching over me. She’s watching over me and Dash. When Dash asks if he will see his mother again, I never lie to him. I tell him she’s in his heart and if he believes he will see her again, then he will. I let him know that his mother is always there in my heart too. When he asks me how I know, my answer is always the same: it’s simply faith.