Making peace with our ghosts

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

"Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what."

— Salman Rushdie

•••

You may not believe in ghosts — but they believe in you. And the older I get, the more I'm convinced that we need to see them for what they are. Of course, there are ghosts and there are ghosts. I continue to question the existence of the more vaporous variety. And yet, I can't begin to explain an experience my mother and I shared many years ago, when I was 18 and still living at home.

The two of us lived in a converted carriage house while my mother, a historian, developed an interpretive program for the adjacent historic house: the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House on St. Paul's storied Summit Avenue.

And late one night my mother and I had a chilling experience.

My bedroom was the first room at the top of a long flight of stairs. One night I was jolted from a deep sleep by the sound of successively louder footsteps plodding steadily up the stairs.

Gripped with terror, I couldn't move or make a sound. I lay there stiff and sweating, waiting for the final footsteps to approach my bedroom door. They never came. I kept waiting, but — nothing.

I was certain I'd been awake. Could it have been a trick of my imagination, or a vestige of my bedtime reading material, "Crime and Punishment," I wondered? After what seemed like hours, I finally fell back to sleep.

The next morning my mother and I were in the kitchen making our separate breakfasts. She turned to me in a determinedly casual way and asked if I'd heard anything in the night.

It made no sense to us. We were daylight skeptics, not inclined to supernatural speculation or cabalistic causes. Aw-shucks Minnesotans, you might say. In any case, it was a singular experience and we rarely spoke of it after that.

These days I see other, more persistent spirits that might deserve our reckoning. They are the lingering apparitions of our abiding regrets — and their substance is material to our psychic self-possession.

The spirit of regret manifests as free-floating anxieties that cling to our sheets, colonize our dreams and metastasize in the dark night of our souls.

But in this age of Narcissus, we actively avoid unflattering self-reflection. If we must deal with regrets, we might try to write them off by blaming generic human downfalls: biblical boors like pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth and greed. But those hobgoblins are mere admission to the garden.

The regrets that truly inhabit us bear the images of our victims. Those whose suffering we didn't see — or chose not to acknowledge. The people we betrayed, belittled or ignored. The ones we treated carelessly or callously. The lives we could not save. The loves we could not claim.

As any insomniac knows, the long reach of regret overtakes us when the world's gone quiet and we're alone with our thoughts. As the day's shadows grow long, you can smell the sulfur and hear the rattling chains of approaching ghosts.

That's when the litany of personal transgressions plays out in our head. An infinite loop. A reverse bucket list of what not to be, say, do, think or even feel.

Those seemingly vital lies we cling to, attempting to keep remorse at bay? Flimsy self-deception. The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is pure fiction. Few of us can suspend disbelief forever.

"Make the most of your regrets," Thoreau is said to have said, adding "To regret deeply is to live afresh."

So, when your heart contracts with shame, guilt or remorse, you know the ghosts of regret have come calling. Let them in for a spell.

If it's not too late, apologize to those you've wronged — with reckless disregard for your own ego. Find a way to pay it forward and forge a path to forgiveness, starting with yourself. Soon you'll be forgiving others.

It feels surprisingly good.

And yes, it takes a lot of practice. But it's an honest catharsis, better than any vengeance or vindication. And that's why I was so incredulous — angry, really — when my mother, near the end of her life, made like Edith Piaf and claimed she had no regrets.

I knew that could not be true. My mother had lived a fully dimensioned life. She was a complex, self-aware and ardent woman. And she had admitted before that there were things she'd do differently.

But now I believe what she meant by "no regrets" was that she'd accepted her missteps and made peace with them.

We all have baggage. And we need to claim it. Our unfortunate choices and ignoble motivations are integral to a fully realized identity.

So, bring those ghosts out into the light early and often. Welcome them — temporarily — into your inner sanctum before they assume permanent residence deep within. Disarm them with your candor.

Spin them around and dance awhile, and then turn them loose. You will have new dancing partners soon enough. But for a time, you will feel more definite, somehow. Solid and whole and light on your feet.

Just before her exit, my dear, departed mother told me, with a playful glint in her fading green eyes, that if there was more after this life, she'd tap me on the left shoulder. Over 20 years later, I'm still waiting for her touch.

So far, nothing. And that is one of my many regrets.