A friend of ours was diagnosed with Covid not too long ago. About three or four days before her diagnosis, she and Linette had taken a long walk together. They’d been wearing their masks the whole time, and had stayed a good distance apart from one anther, but we were still concerned. Linette not only went and got tested, and told everyone that she’d been in contact with since about her possible exposure, but I also stayed away from the restaurant, just in case I might have gotten it from her. We were lucky this time. Linette’s test eventually came back negative. And our friend’s case, as it turned out, was relatively mild. Still, though, it made for a strange few days this winter, with me and the kids going on about our lives, as Linette stayed sequestered in a room downstairs, just off the kitchen, living a quieter parallel existence to that of me and the kids.

It was like the kids and I were sharing the house with a ghost. Linette, of course, had been away before. But this was different. She was here, but, at the same time, she wasn’t. The kids and I would be playing games at the kitchen table, and we’d hear her in the distance, making small movements. We’d hear a drawer close, or a muffled cough. Occasionally we’d see a glimpse of her, in her mask, as she floated quickly from the room where she was staying to the bathroom just feet away. There was no talking, really, except through the closed door, as we wanted to keep our distance. It was kind of eerie. We’d leave food on a tray outside a door, and we’d here it slowly being pulled in, across the floor of this almost 200 year old house, in as we walked away.

For what it’s worth, we were really good to her. We treated her well for the days she spent in isolation. We left her clean clothes and food. We could hear her though the walls, saying that she felt loved. But, for the most part, we just left her alone, to the point that we’d start to forget about her in little ways. We’d make decisions about meals without consulting with her. We’d talk about our days over dinner. And, meanwhile, Linette was somewhere else, in a kind of in-between place. Maybe it was that she and I had had just watched the the film A Ghost Story, which is about a man who refuses to leave his young wife after he passes away in a car accident, but it made me think about death, and what it must be like to lose a loved one. It also brought to mind a really early lyric by my one-day-a-year band, the Monkey Power Trio. The song is called You Say You’re Leaving, and here’s the lyric.

“You say you’re leaving / but you aren’t leaving / you say you’re leavin’ / but you’re not / you say you’re goin’ / that you are goin’ / but my mind won’t let you go away / everywhere and every day / everything I see or say / I see traces of you around / a lock of hair / a shirt you used to wear / a piece of tooth / a bottle of jam / an old box of cereal…”

I suspect, when I wrote that, I was thinking about all of the stuff we leave behind when we move on, and the meaning that others assign to even the smallest of objects that are left. For instance, somewhere here in the house, I have a recipe for banana bread that I copied down from a former girlfriend. It’s the last tangible thing that I have that ties me to her, as everything else has slowly disappeared over the past quarter century. I don’t even have a photograph. That one little, torn, hopelessly stained recipe for vegan banana bread is all that I have left. And, as I haven’t seen it in years, I suspect it may be gone now two. Everything fades away with the passage of time.

I should mention that, according to Linette, the days she spent alone the small room off the kitchen were among the nicest she’s ever had. She enjoyed the break from us after being locked up together these past nine months or so without reprieve. She slept, watched movies, and caught up on her work. And, now, I’m seeing it from her perspective. As of last night, it’s me that’s in isolation, as I await the results of my Covid test, having come in contact with a person who would later test positive.

It’s interesting being the ghost. They leave food outside my door, and I listen to them living their lives while sitting here on the couch alone. They know I’m here, of course, and they occasionally come over to ask me how I’m doing, but there are moments when we’re just existing on parallel planes, where I’m in here, missing them, and just listening to them get older. This, I know, is what it must be like to be a ghost… except without the food.