It’s a little difficult to live with a ghost. As is understandable, I’d presume. Who’d choose to live with the dead when it’s hard enough with the living. But that’s not the matter. I have to live with a ghost. I’ve almost made peace with that, the larger question that haunts(along with the ghost whose career it is to haunt) is “How?”
The question of space: Do you quietly go about with your living and hope the ghost leaves you to it? But that’s not to be - this one’s an attention whore(Yay! I have company?). Do you include the ghost in your day-to-day living? Do you change your bedroom’s curtains to suit her fancies? Or do you stomp your feet and say, To hell with what you want! It’s my bedroom! But surely you can’t deem her to hell, why else would she be such a permanent presence in this land? It’s an odd conundrum, this.
Then the question of time: Who came first? The ghost or I? Maybe that’s the wrong question to ask. Whose world is this, of the dead and the undead? The ghost’s or mine?
The matter of life and beyond: Does one ask the ghost about living and unliving? Is it polite? It sure is, you don’t walk into someone’s life just like that, plonk your non-existent ass and expect to be treated with warmth and love and given a hearty welcome.
You can’t exorcise a ghost. A frightfully ugly and stupid ghost, at that. You let it be and hope it finds its peace. And goes away. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Or flings itself off a cliff and finds itself flying away to Neverland.
I understand why gravestones read RIP. It’s just polite speak for “Leave us the fuck alone. Be gone!”