Ghost Riders

While driving across the bleakest part of Texas today I had an experience of being ‘visited’ by a number of family, boyfriends, friends who had died. Now before you think I have gone completely mad on this trip, let me explain.

I left El Paso, TX driving east on Interstate 10 for my first full day of Texas driving. Folks here get an 80-mile per hour speed limit and they use it! I couldn’t keep up mostly because that day there was 20-30 mile per hour perpendicular winds blowing and keeping my little Ford Focus station wagon on the road was hard. West Texas is barren but hilly and so that added to the wind and the bleakness. Still it was sunny and I was feeling good. My plan was to make it to milepost 400. Did you know that Texas is 100 miles wider on the interstate than California is long?

Anyway, I was driving and singing to music and thinking about all the different family and friends in my life. Having just finished reading all my journals I was aware of so many memories. In those journals I had found dried flowers and butterfly wings- tiny mementos of important days I could no longer remember. I had thought I would release them in the Rio Grande in El Paso but didn’t find a good place to so I still had them with me. I wanted to let them go before leaving Texas but didn’t know how or when.

That’s when the first ghost appeared in the passenger seat. I got the very visceral feeling that my first serious boyfriend, a man who later died in his 40’s was sitting in my car saying hello. If I looked straight ahead I could clearly see him out of my peripheral vision but if I turned directly towards the passenger seat I saw nothing.

He said hello and I was thrilled to experience him. I wasn’t scared nor did I think it was strange for him to be there, I was just happy to be with him again. We talked. He wished me well and supported my trip and then in a flash I sensed he was gone and my old friend from high school who died at the age of 33 popped into the seat. She asked if she could smoke in the car (she always was a big smoker) I said “No”. Again she gave me words of encouragement and messages of love.

Soon there were others in the back seat. All were friends and family I had lost, a child- hood friend, my mother and father, an uncle and the brother of a friend. I kept thinking I was making this all up but they were each so distinct and different that I couldn’t have. Each one came to sit in the front when the last one was finished. Each one when finished seemed to fly out the window into the desert.

I had great conversations with them all and tears and messages of love from them all. Some had messages for other people. It was an amazing experience. As suddenly as it began, they all left and the expereince was over. It lasted 20 minutes or more. As I got off the highway for a pit stop in a small town in the most barren part of Texas I decided now was the time to let go of all those mementos from the journals so I opened the window and held each handful out the window and watched the flowers etc. blow away.

I knew I had let go of all that I needed to from the past and yet held onto the love. I laughed and thanked them all for being on this journey with me.