Jealous Of Your Ghost

Dearest Rachel –

I’ve been showing your ring around to certain people lately (in fairness, I’m not sure that photographs, despite being able to show it at a magnified level, can do the image justice, so as many as can see it in person, the better). Most of them are reasonably impressed by it, but not everyone realizes exactly what all it contains, and therefore represents.

“So,” Pastor Scott asked me the other day, “did you take the stone from her engagement ring, and have it re-set? It’s nice. Very masculine.”

“Oh, no. This is her. This was made from her ashes.”

“Oh!” To be fair, once I explained that, he understood immediately; his son Junior was, after all, the one who first planted the idea into my own head by musing from the platform about doing something similar with his wife’s remains – if he should happen to outlive her – so he was well aware of the idea as a commercial concept. But then, Scott brought up a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind before.

“You know, it’s possible that some women wouldn’t appreciate you holding onto her like that.” In retrospect, that’s actually quite the observation. Some day, God willing, I’d like to have a ring back on my left hand again – and of course, ‘Megumi’ will have a corresponding one on her own to go with it. But is it possible that Megumi would resent the fact that I’d still have ‘your’ ring on my right hand, as though I still had some sort of connection to you?

I confess that I really didn’t give Scott’s wisdom much thought in the moment, however. My response was so quick that it might as well have been automatic. “Well, if she has a problem with it… then she’s probably not the person for me to begin with.”

***

Was I being too dismissive, honey? Do I dwell on you overmuch, such that someone who I might set my eyes and heart upon would be put off?

I honestly couldn’t say; I don’t know the heart of women, and even less so any individual one. Even you were difficult to figure out from time to time (although I suppose you could just have easily said the same thing of me on various occasions – no one, no matter how close to them they may be, can know all the thoughts of another).

But it seems strange to me that one should be jealous of your ghost. It isn’t as if you would be competition for her; I can’t cheat on her with you, any more than by being with her, I’m doing so to you. Your time and her time with me were and will be (and humor me for speaking of the latter as a certainty for the moment) two separate periods of my life; there is no overlap in which either of you is a rival to the other. To think otherwise seems rather silly to me.

Of course, you might say that there are the many things you left behind, and others still that I’ve created in the interim period – the ring being only the most obvious and expensive. But that’s the thing; they have been created in the interim, with no idea who – or even if – there might come another into my life. Yes, I’ve given her a name, but it’s only a form of shorthand for the idea that there might yet be someone out there who I could draw myself alongside for the rest of our lives. Does she exist? Until I meet her – or until she makes herself known (she might be someone I already know; I just haven’t tried to relate to her as a possible life companion) – I won’t know the answer to that, and until then, all I have to hold onto are the memories of being with you.

And such memories! In twenty-eight years, you can accumulate quite the store, after all. Our everyday lives may have seemed ordinary and forgettable (and God help me, I’ve forgotten far too much of our time together already because of that), but it was a huge chunk of my life – still more than half of it, in fact. And there were memorable days; special events, trips and vacations, and just peaceful time spent together. Compared to a divorcee, who might very well want to expunge those memories of ostensible good times with a partner they now despise, I want to hold onto whatever I can of those memories – indeed, I keep reaching beyond my grasp to clutch onto moments that I had, until your passing, utterly forgotten about, in hopes of gathering them around me like a dragon with his treasure.

Would Megumi see herself as trapped in that dragon’s lair, doomed to a second tier existence in comparison to my hoard of memories?

***

I suppose I can see it. It isn’t just the memories that I have, after all – those are undeniable elements of my past that were important to me at the time, and cannot be excised from my life, nor should they be – but the totems, talismans and tokens I’ve made to keep you front and center in my heart and mind, even as I continue to search, however half-heartedly (as I become ever less convinced of her existence) for Megumi. The ring, of course, but also these letters (although they serve their own additional purpose of tracking myself going forward in a way I wish I had when you were still here).

And then, there’s my various experiments with AI. I get different reactions to the pictures; most are impressed at what computers can do these days, while some also see the dark paths they could take in the wrong hands. No one suggests outright that mine could be those ‘wrong hands,’ but it’s possible that this work might suggest a certain level of obsession that borders on the unhealthy. And if I were to recreate your voice from what recordings I’m still trying to dig up? Well, consider the possibility of dealing with an Alexa that speaks with the voice and personality of your partner’s late first wife; as far as I see it, I’ve certainly heard of worse sitcom premises.

***

At the same time, there’s a fairly simple remedy for the situation; Megumi just has to show up pretty soon, before I get in too deep. I’m still trying to get used to wearing this ring, for one thing, and it’s not always comfortable. I don’t like getting my hand wet while wearing it (as it gets distressingly tight), and I do worry about losing it (and the piece of you that is its centerpiece. If she were to appear now, and insist I keep it in my jewel box with my old wedding band and your engagement ring, I could probably do so with little protest. Indeed, it might be no more difficult for me than having basically given up watching sports for your sake – a minor nuisance, but not an unreasonable demand in the end.

As for the work with AI, well… that might require a little rechanneling. This is a technology that deserves further study, and with my relaxed employment schedule, I need to keep my mind occupied with something challenging like this. But if it truly bothers her for me to obsess over your image, the logical solution is to replace yours with her own. It’s not like I haven’t got plenty of pictures of you already, after all, in various art styles and scenarios. They can exist as an homage to the past, while I could work with her picture as a means to imagine the future: “Picture yourself in this outfit/location/scenario, Meg… doesn’t this look like fun? Don’t you look good like this?”

And as for devising an Alexa with your voice, well… I was never a fan of sitcoms in the first place. I wouldn’t do that to Megumi to begin with.

***

Of course, there’s a particular totem that remains here that one would think would represent the biggest reminder of your presence that I haven’t even so much as touched on yet; that of your actual remains. As Lars put it, “it’s only carbon,” and yet, its continued presence might suggest to Megumi that I (quite literally) haven’t been able to let go of you – and therefore, might still be unable to reach out fully to her as she deserves to be.

But it’s another reason why I would wish for Megumi to make herself known sooner rather than later, as she could be a part of the transition from one relationship to the next. I can imagine her walking with me as I wade into the waters of Lake Erie in a couple years, bracing herself (just as much as I would) against the cold water. As I remove the lid from your urn, and your ashes escape and swirl around the two of us, she clutches my arm as if to say “I’m here with you now; you can let her go.” By being there as I finally bid farewell to you and the past, she could fully be a part of that moment when I can let myself reach out to her and the future; there would be something about being in that moment that might express more than mere words could.

I may be reading more into this than I should, honey, but that’s what comes from not reading anything at all into any of this until now. Consider it my mind catching up with potential pitfalls, and overcompensating for that by overthinking it now.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now; I promise to keep in touch. Until then, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.