Ghost Boy

(I remember you . . .)

The caption under the photo said

it was from Paris 1922.  That’s all the information it had.  I kept arguing with myself back and forth, asking how it could be possible.  For there in the back row of the photo was my old friend from childhood.  I would know him anywhere at any time.  I would never forget his face because I loved him.  The only problem was that we hadn’t been born yet.  What was he doing in a photo from 1922?

(Paris 1922, image found on Twitter.)

And it wasn’t just a similarity.

It was him down to the very last detail.  The broad smirk, the square jaw, the big ears, the messy bangs—it was all him exactly as he was, exactly as I remembered him.  We had long lost contact with one another because that’s how it was in those days.  There was no internet and no texting.  Once you moved away from someone, the only contact was letters, as parents would never allow a long distance phone call.  And eventually the letters would stop.

I heard now and then that he had come to a strange end, but I never got many details.  And to tell the truth, I had simply forgotten about him.  Fifty plus years will do that to you.  Yet here he was exactly as he had always been.  The only exception was that it was 1922 and he was not supposed to be alive yet.

I’ve often wondered about the combinations Nature makes of our faces when we are in the womb.  I mean, there are only so many combinations She can make, and there has to be some sort of repeating, I would think.  That’s why we see people who look familiar to us, yet we don’t know them.  This was different, though.  This was not a similarity.  This was my friend in exactness.

(Image found on rgaetan .com.)

Should I chalk it up to a coincidence?

I couldn’t.  I kept staring at that photo, mesmerized by his face.  No, it was not a coincidence.  It was definitely him.  Somehow he was there in 1922 and then there again at the same age in the 1960s.

I believe wholeheartedly that we return to this Earth again and again.  We start over with each new life, but we’re the same person.  I used to think we’d start over as the same person but in a different body.  Lately I’ve begun to think that we are the same person in the same body.  And those bodies go out and find the same people they associated with in past lives so that we all play out the drama again and again.  Maybe until we get it perfect and move on to another realm.  Or maybe that’s all the simulation has to offer.

(Image found at thriveglobal .com.)

It was the same with my friend, Diane.

We went everywhere together and did everything together in our early 20s.  She was so much fun!  But again, as happens when you move away and you don’t have the internet or texting, you eventually lose touch.  The letters are fewer and further between until they dwindle to yearly or even every other year and then just stop.

But I never stopped thinking of her as one of my best friends.  She’d pop into my mind now and then, and I’d always smile thinking about all of our crazy antics in the past.  At about age 27, she got stomach cancer but she beat it and remained cancer-free for about 20 more years.  Then one night she was driving home from a quick trip to the store.  She got in a fatal car accident and died at the scene.  I didn’t learn about it until a few years later.  I hung my head in shame at not having known.

Several years later I went into a Walmart,

and there was Diane working in one of the aisles.  I almost couldn’t breathe when I saw her.  I hid behind a pole and tried to get a good long look at her without being seen myself.  She ended up walking away, but that wasn’t the end of it.  I kept seeing her in the store every time I went.  She looked as I imagine she would have looked being aged 25 more years since the last time I saw her.  Same height, same hair, same smile.  Not as exact as the boy in the photo above, but again, she had aged.

(Image found at universityofmetaphysics .com.)

This went on for a while.

I’d see her in the store and sometimes follow her around, trying not to make myself obvious.  Then one day it happened.  She entered the store as a customer instead of an employee and bumped right into me.  She laughed and apologized and kept going.  It was not Diane’s voice, but everything else was Diane.  This time I had the chance to see her upfront and personal.  It was Diane except for the voice.  But Diane had died years ago in a faraway place.  How did she get back here—alive?

Part of me wanted to run after her, strike up a conversation, try to become friends.  But I knew how crazy that would look.  Instead, I just stared after her and watched as she walked away and disappeared down an aisle.  It was Diane.

And again, I know there are only so many

facial combinations Mother Nature can come up with.  It stands to reason that eventually She will repeat herself.  But exactly?  We’re told that no two snowflakes are alike.  In all this world with all the billions upon billions of snowflakes that have fallen, none are alike.  So how is that someone can look exactly in every detail like someone else who has died?

I don’t think they can.  I think the original person comes back again and again.  The older I get, the more I believe this.  That’s probably because the older a person gets, the more people die and life gets shuffled up and we get thrown together with another new (old) batch of people.  But I think we really come back.  So here we all are, and here we all are again.

(Image found at universityofmetaphysics .com.)

An acquaintance of mine recently died

at the end of last year.  It was a turbulent relationship at best.  I did everything in my power to be kind and decent to this person, who did not deserve my kindness, but I did it in hopes of paying off some karmic debt so that we would not have to meet again in another life.  I guess I was trying to settle an old score and hoping that I had paid enough.  If I live long enough in this life, maybe I’ll find out.  If I don’t see him around, it will be a good sign.  If I do, the saga continues.  Hopefully when I return in another life, though, it will have been enough.

Does it sound crazy to you?  Look around.  Look at the faces that surround you.  There are people you know yet you have never met.  There are people here who shouldn’t be here.  But they are.  The next time you see someone who reminds you of someone in your distant past, take another good long look.  It may just really be that same person.  And if you catch someone staring at you, giving you a strange faraway look, it may very well be that you are the ghost and you are from their past life.

(Image found at ocoy .org.)

Where does it all lead?

I don’t know.  Some say we come back again and again so we can improve ourselves before we go back to God.  They say this Earth is a learning place, like a classroom of life.  Here we learn how to be better people, kinder beings.  We come back until we are ready for the next challenge somewhere else.  That doesn’t explain how we keep coming back to the same people in the same dance, but perhaps we are all permanently tied together in some way.  Maybe we are all already ghosts.

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If you’re interested in odd fairy tales that can be read on many levels, please check out my book, “Fairy Tales of Maine.” Not for sissies.

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