An Unfortunate Ghost Story

Always question what you see.

The famous Russian author Ayn Rand once said, “The truth is not for all, but only for those who seek it.”

But whose truth? That’s the thing. You can either choose to conform to someone else’s truth or your can pursue your own. Sometimes these are the same thing but more often, they are not.

Often we live the truth we are provided without even realizing this is the choice we are making. The subtlety of it is almost insidious because it is so easy to miss. It can be nothing more than an imperceptible wrinkle in the fabric of your experience.

In either case, there is a strong possibility somewhere in time you made a decision that put you into your current orbit that was based in fear. The fear of something terrible happening if you deviated from some other course.

Maybe you ask yourself, “how the hell did I get here?” Perhaps you wonder if there was something more you could be doing with your life. Or, is this it? Just maybe there was an inflection in which you made a choice out of fear. You didn’t do something because of all the terrible things that might go wrong if you stepped out into the void.

Well something terrible did happen, but not because you did deviate but because you didn’t. What is the terrible thing that happened you ask? You settled for something less than your higher purpose and path.

You are forty something or maybe fifty something and somewhere along the line you picked Beige over Bold.

If that is you, I am going to tell you a ghost story.  

I am reminded of a quote by Dan Poblocki, the author of The Ghost of Graylock, who said, “We ask our brain to stop worrying, stop obsessing, stop dreaming the same scary dreams again and again. But our brain rarely takes requests.”

Twenty five years ago, my father was in the ICU being treated for cancer.  It was early 1992 and he was undergoing a new therapy for non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma called a blood stem transfer.  I was a young 24 year old just getting started in the work world.  I happened to be the same age as my son when these words were put to paper.

At the time, one of the leading research centers was in Omaha (seriously). My mom, sister and I went out to bring him home.  The treatment was done and had been successful, he was in remission.  We could get on with our lives.  For him, it was a second chance to be a better husband and father.  He had worked to be a provider but little else.  However, the details of this are for another story.

The day we were scheduled to check out of the hospital, my mom and sister had gone shopping for some new clothes.  He was much thinner.  I decided to stay at the hospital. Shopping for clothes in Omaha wasn’t on my bucket list at that time.

Then suddenly, the bronchitis he had developed the night before got out of hand.

I recall the doctor coming to me and telling me the situation and indicating they needed to conduct a bronchotomy.  This basically meant vacuuming out his lungs, which were rapidly filling with fluid.  Without the procedure, he could drown.  At the same time they were prepping for the procedure, they were pumping him full of antibiotics as his immune system was still well on its heels.

The doctor told me we had two choices.  Local or general anesthetic.   The procedure could be stressful, so since I was the only family member present and on the power of attorney, I selected to put him under to spare him the stress.  I recall with detail, what the room looked like.  The equipment, the number of staff.  Even the smells and sounds that surrounded me.  These memories and the emotions that came with them are burned into my conscious and subconscious for better or worse.

The problem was he had never had general anesthetic and was allergic.  He died of a massive heart attack on the table.  He was 52.  I recall being there, in the room as all of this happened and then being the one to tell my mom and sister he had died when they returned with his new clothes.  We took him home, had the funeral and buried him.  I stayed in the town where my parents lived, now just my mom and sister and never left.  

Shortly after the funeral I went to visit one of his business partners.  A generally miserable facsimile of a human being, who over his many years had amassed a large amount of wealth through actions taken without any form of professional remorse.

Today we would call him a sociopath.

He would rob you then stab you in the heart, looking in your eyes and smiling-thoroughly enjoying every second of it.  Confronting the nearly 70 year old in his palatial 12th floor corner office as a 24 year old, I was more than a little nervous. This was not my playing field.

Entering his office, he sat behind a massive mahogany desk.  Manicured nails, hair slicked back, Hermes tied in a Windsor knot, sitting in his suit coat with french cuffs showing. He looked like a french bulldog stuffed into a Saville Row suit.

Leaning back in his leather seat, he said, “son, let me tell you a little secret.  We were renegotiating your dad’s junior partnership with us before he left for treatment.  We slow rolled it after he got cancer.  When he was out in Omaha, I went to see him.  We bet him that he wouldn’t survive.  If he did, we’d finish the negotiation and give him most of what he wanted.  Not all, but most.  But, since he didn’t, all bets are off.  Your mom can have her insurance money but that’s it.  We'll be keeping the rest.”  

He stopped, leaving a long silence.  His aging blue eyes dead set on me.  He never blinked but spoke behind gritted teeth.  “Your dad was a useful tool.  You are less than that.  You mean nothing.  You are nothing and you have nothing.  Now get the hell out of my office. By the way, if you ever come back here, I will have you arrested for trespassing.”

I remember forcibly pushing feelings down.  Not crying.  Not grieving.  Not feeling.  Put it all away. Bury it deep.  If it comes back, ignore it.  Which is exactly what I did.  

I got busy with building a life and a persona that wasn’t mine.  It was a continuation of where my father had left off.  I was not working for me, I was working for revenge against a man who fundamentally didn’t give a shit what I did or didn’t do.  

Nonetheless, I now had a script, a costume and a mask.  Time to put it all on and live that life regardless of how poorly the script was written and the costume and mask fit.  That is where I was.  I had been thrown off my orbit and ended up in a place I did not belong.  But that is where I was, so I had better make the most of it.  It never dawned on me that I had a choice, nor did anyone ever tell me.

I carried all of that guilt and trauma with me from 1992 until 2023. 

I never told anyone, including myself what I had hidden so deep.  That the whole thing was a lie and I was an imposter, even in my own life. Bury it so deep it could never see the light of day. Someplace where it couldn’t do any more harm.

When we chose incorrectly, we force fit a life path with a life that are incongruent. When this happens, there left over pieces you must contend with, much like the clock disassembled as a child and then incorrectly reassembled. Rather than throw the parts away, you hide them in a drawer. You fail to realize that without those parts in their proper place, the clock won’t work correctly.

It is never too late to recognize the mistake and reassemble the clock correctly. For me, it was time to do that.

In the fall of 2023, over a coffee with my uncle I brought up my father’s death.  The hospital experience.  It was the first time since he died I had spoken about it.  It was raw and as painful as the day he had died.  I was in the midst of trying to make some profound changes in my life and one of them was a commitment to visualize and verbalize the dark emotions we all hide away.  To put down the heavy emotional stones I had been accumulating and carrying for so long in a backpack.  

Over the years, the weight had become unbearable and probably more importantly, unwieldy.  I staggered with the weight.  No longer nimble.  I was exhausted.

Telling the story was both cathartic and exhausting.  I expected only emotional support from my Uncle.  

What I didn’t expect was, “Steve, most of that never happened.  Here is what did happen.  He then went on to outline a different set of experiences that I had no recollection of.  When he was done, looking at my face, he said, “Steve, please tell me you haven’t held all that in for the last 34 years.  What you have blamed yourself for, never really happened.”

The point to this ghost story is that what we often believe to be true isn’t. It’s a manufactured fabrication which often is for the benefit of the person telling it. The joy caused in creating fear and distress. We take that story, make it real in our own minds which only amplifies our own distress and changes the choices we make.

Listen to your own heart and select a new path. Maybe it requires a 90 degree turn to the right. Or maybe just a 5% deviation from where you are now heading. Either way, you will end up in a new place very different from your current heading. And, the terrible fears you are worried about will not manifest anywhere close to what you think.

Recognize what stories you are being told by others or even by yourself. What you are presented with isn’t always what it seems. Don’t believe in ghosts.