Although the theater is empty, it is a sign we will return, a light left on stage to keep us all safe in the dark. Ross Henderson-McKillop
I am not a theater kid. So, when I read about a new film called Ghostlight, I immediately loved the title, but I thought it was made up word. The movie is about a construction worker, struggling in the aftermath of his son’s death by suicide, who’s invited to become part of a local production of Romeo & Juliet. The title comes from the single light left burning in a theater after all the others are turned off. Some say it’s left on for safety, others for luck.
I love the image of that bulb burning in an empty theater, holding the darkness at bay until the light returns. It takes me right back to the early, agonizing days of grief when the world was charcoal gray, and it felt like Dan, Molly and Buster were all that were holding me here. Even then, I could feel the small flame of life that flickered inside me, a reminder that Jimmy wouldn’t want me to depart that way.
I learned to love that smoldering ember, despite how much it burned. In time, I came to see it, not just as a symbol of my grief, but also a mark of how fiercely I love Jimmy. It didn’t make the pain of his absence easier, but it made it feel earned, legitimate, mine.
Twenty twenty-four has been a deeply challenging year. The ten-year anniversary of Jimmy’s death was far more brutal than I expected, an awful reminder of how long he’s been gone and how raw my pain still feels. My work slowed down in the early months of the year which left me with few distractions or ways to stay busy. Most workdays, before and after February 16th, I couldn’t get through the afternoon without a dead-to-the-world nap. As a consummate coffee lover, I couldn’t ignore what my body and heart were telling me about how much I wanted to escape.
Looking back seven months later, I’m oddly grateful for how hard it was. Although too much to carry every moment, I don’t ever want to lose the sharp edge of loss or the way my eyes fill when someone says something kind about Jimmy. People say grief is a lifelong journey, and I’m starting to see that now. The way every year brings some new milestone or joyous event that Jimmy is not here to witness or take part in. Some new age appropriate experience he is not here to have. The way his pictures stop at 21, just days before he died. The fact that there will be no more.
Yet this year has also shown me the unanticipated ways Jimmy’s spirit lives on. A beloved friend sent me a card recently, thanking me for teaching her how to sit with a friend who is devastated by loss. It was a lovely, unexpected gesture. But as I read it, I kept thinking that her thanks were not really for me. It was Jimmy who taught me to walk toward someone else’s pain instead of running from it. An old soul who understood, even as a teenager, how much it matters that we bear witness, grieve in community, show up. I no longer remember who didn’t come to Jimmy’s celebration of life, but I will never forget who was there.
I realized recently that I talk about Jimmy in every setting now. The through line between that loss, my grief and who he was in the world is so clear to me now. I used to think I would run out of things to say about him, especially when I wrote. But there are no fewer words; they just take a different shape. Writing has allowed me to stay close to Jimmy, to age with him, even though he remains forever twenty-one. I can conjure him up, hear his voice, learn from him still. Distant and wispy, hard to reach and impossible to hug, he has become almost as real to me now as he was when he was alive.
And so I trudge on, walking in the shadow of grief, carrying Jimmy’s spirit to light my way forward. Leaving a ghost light on in the space he should be occupying so others can know him, too. Hoping that he will see it and emerge from the darkness.
