Ghosts are People Too...cradle to the grave and beyond

The author as a newborn with her mother.

This month's post is not based so much on research as it is on my own observation and reflection about how we view different stages of human life and how it may relate to the Afterlife.

How many times have you heard someone say "I love children," in the same way they might say "I love dogs"...or "cats"...or "baby goats?" It's as though children are a different species altogether. The same goes for "teenagers" or the newest designation du jour, "milleninals," or "the middle-aged," or "old people" --unless you are a child or a teenager or a millennial or middle-aged or an old person, and then it's just "us." It seems to be a part of human nature to inhabit our particular current age group as though this is who we've always been and who we will always be. Not necessarily in an intellectual sense, but in an emotional/psychological one. That children will always be children and teenagers will be always be stuck in adolescent limbo. We can think back on our own earlier days and note that, yes, we lived in that house as a child, or we hated carrots as a child, or we loved horses as a child. But go to a playground and watch a gang of kids swinging and sliding and hanging from the monkey bars and we think "those are children--look how much energy they have...or look

The author with mother and brother

how whiny they are...or look how cute they are..." and see them as something separate from the rest of humanity. Boys will be boys...forever.

BUT, children are just people who've not been around as long as some. And old people are just those who've been around the longest of us. They are the same creature. In thinking of all things ghostly for my current work-in-progress, I can extrapolate this same tendency of ours to our attitude toward those who have entered that next stage of life, what we sometimes refer to as the Afterlife. We often think of the spirits of the departed as strange and unholy entities. Or we think of them as strange and very holy entities. Monsters or angels, take your pick. But whatever they are, they aren't us. I am putting forth the idea that ghosts are not a separate species anymore than are the youngest or oldest among us. They are simply us at a different phase of life. Therefore, they are nothing to fear unless they were fearsome at an earlier age. Just people. The truest, innermost soul of the person, free of physical advantages or disadvantages with which they lived in a former stage of life.

The author, her grandmother, mother, and baby

OK. I'm climbing down from my metaphysical soapbox now. Perhaps this sudden need to express myself on this issue comes from the fact that April is the month of my birth and I am thinking of years past and years to come and how I've changed and will continue to change but, at my core, am the same person now and always, even in that future "land of far, far away" to which my beloved mother has already traveled. Thanks, dear Reader, for indulging me.

Thanks for stopping by...y'all come back now.  And Happy Birthday to Me! :)

Kate

P.S.-- Below is the word count meter showing my progress on my latest Work In Progress: 
Zephyr Stone and the Moon Mist Ghost

33459 / 60000 words. 56% done!