We have a ghost in the house next to us. A most unusual ghost.

Ghost stories traditionally paint ghosts as those who were unable to cross over due to unfinished business, or the great love they had for something here on earth that they didn’t want to leave behind.

The ghost next door, however, finished his business. As an alcoholic, the bottom of the next bottle was his business. He finished them. There was nothing he loved enough to hold him back. He loved his dog, but due to alcoholism—his dog was taken away from him. He loved his whiskey—but it was killing him.

Few people noticed when he left this world. Few people attended his funeral. Few people mourned.

Still, he left an unusual ghost next door. The ghost of silence. The ghost of a darkened house with no lights in the windows. When he lived in the house, the lights were always on and the TV blared day and night because he drank himself into oblivion and couldn’t get up to turn off the lights or the TV.

The alien emptiness of movement—a barking dog that rushed to the fence to fend off imagined intruders, or to beg those passing by to stop long enough to pet him; the daily visits of the kind neighbor down and across the street who came faithfully to make sure the dog had something to eat, the occasional glimpses of the neighbor when he bumbled out to the curb to catch a taxi.

A different kind of ghost. The ghost of despair. The ghost of lost chances and wasted life. The yard grown tall with weeds, trampled down with scattered debris, brambles overrunning the space and thrusting themselves against the wooden fence pushing it askew. My fence. The storm-battered roof with broken tiles on one side. The motorcycle shed in the back, unapproachable through the thick bramble and weed carpet stretching from the foundation of the house to the neighbor’s fence. My fence.

The bramble carpet hides timid hedgehogs and stray cats—but it can’t hide the ghost. An usual ghost. A sad ghost. A ghost clad not in a sheet—but in layers of despair and regret. One layer is mine. What could I have done to help?

“Who  has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Those who linger long at the wine and go in search of strong drink.” Proverbs 23:29.

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