Living in a Ghost Town

Recently, a few colleagues and I stood at our doors waiting for 1st period students to arrive, talking about how kids today do not know who Lucille Ball is, nor have they seen I Love Lucy. I silently thought about whether or not I had introduced the series to my own children, wondering if I had also been complicit in this generational deprivation of the classics. Then I remembered that I had tried a few times, but my kids weren’t amused. The comedy didn’t land.  

I think it is interesting that we do this though. How we find it unimaginable to let go of the things we once enjoyed, wanting others to partake in these beloved memories too. It’s because we get this strange feeling inside of us when we realize that we lose parts of ourselves into the dustbin of history. Everything that has been meaningful and formative in our lives will slip away no matter how hard we try to fight it. That’s a brutal truth to swallow. Our nature responds by wanting to cling, pull it closer, keep it going forever. 

But being part of this circle of life, it means that we all drink from the same spring, but new configurations emerge. 

For spring break this year, I took the kids to Vegas. I dislike Vegas, but I was going to see the Dead and Company show at the Sphere. On the way there, I decided to stop at Calico to break up the drive through the desert. Calico is a ghost town. The only other time I visited was 15 years ago with my husband, back when my oldest was still a baby and the other two kids were not even twinkles in our eyes. On that trip, we were on our way back from Vegas. It was a “last trip to Vegas” that the entire family took with my father-in-law, who was already in his 80s. In the couple of times that I have gone to Vegas since, I always think about that trip. Especially now that my father-in-law is dead. Sister-in-law is dead. Husband is dead. On those long drives these ghosts of the past rise to my consciousness and remind me how fragile it all is. How fast it all goes by. How urgently right now matters. 

I thought it was time to take my family to Calico. My three pre-teen and teen kids were reluctant to partake in my idea of visiting the ghost town, but we ended up having a great time. The weather was perfect, sky clear, and everything was open at the ghost town, so we got to meander through a lot of places, including having lunch in a saloon that used to be the doctor’s pharmacy. I learned that Walter Knott worked at the mine as a young man and got the idea for the ghost town that he would eventually build at Knott’s Berry Farm. In fact, Knott purchased Calico in the 1950s before giving it to the state in the 70s. Somehow Calico felt closer to home than it is, since Knott’s Berry Farm is a local amusement park for us and I grew up with the fake ghost town. I had no idea how interconnected we really were. Far away and near, all at the same time. 

The last resident to live in Calico was Lucy Lane. She lived there until the late 1960s, when she died at the age of 93. This means for the later part of her life (her husband died in the 30s), she lived out there in relative solitude. She acted as the unofficial Calico historian and was happy to share the stories with others. When you visit Calico, you stand at the foot of the Calico Mountains, gazing out at the rugged beauty of the arid Mojave Desert. The reds, browns, and yellows of the mountains are visually striking against a bright blue sky. It is quiet and peaceful, but I wonder how Lucy Lane spent 30 years out there without her husband, in a town of ghosts, left behind in a fossilized place. The old building where she went to school as a child, decrepit. The saloons that were once bustling, empty. No more neighbors to socialize with or stores to shop at, silence. A town of dashed dreams. Shadows of a community that had been fleeting in the grand scheme of everyone’s lives, but for a blip on the timeline, it was everything. 

While we visited and walked around, we spotted the bottle house (made of glass bottles), and I told the kids the story their father told me, about how he visited Calico when he was a kid with his family. There is a picture of them, the kids all baby-faced posing with my young father-in-law. I can imagine my mother-in-law holding the camera, snapping the memory of their family vacation, still building their dreams. Just like my young family, but also not like us. 

I always feel Kenneth’s absence when we do these family outings. All I can do is try to repeat the stories he told me to keep him alive for the kids, but it never feels good enough. Just another stark reminder about how much I can not control in my life. Once there was a young family who visited Calico. Now 4/5 of them are dead. Now my young family is there, standing in the same place, and soon we will be dead too. 

I wanted the kids to ride the silly little train around Calico. The two oldest ones protested. They plopped down on a bench and wouldn’t get up.

“You’re only 10 once,” I said, trying to coax them to their senses. “Peter deserves a chance to ride it.”

“I want to ride,” Peter agreed. “You’re only 10 once. We only live once! I’m going to live big.” 

Peter and I waited in line for our turn. The other two, who had been melting in the hot sun while being stubborn in their protest, came to their senses at the last moment and joined us. We’re only 10, 12, 15, and 43 in this one fleeting moment. We likely will never be back together now that we’ve properly experienced Calico Ghost Town. Let’s go on the silly train ride. And so we did.

Tomorrow, Kenneth has been gone for 9 years. 

I’ve been documenting my grief for 9 years. That feels wild to say. NINE YEARS. 

He has been gone as long as I knew him. This is a reality that my brain has trouble processing. One of our last family memories was going to Disneyland a week before he died. I have a picture of him on the silly little Casey Junior train ride in FantasyLand. At the time it was the kids’ favorite ride. In the picture, Kenneth is grinning widely and clearly enjoying the moment. He loved being their dad. We had so much fun going to Disneyland together, pushing the double stroller and chasing toddlers as they bobbled around with sticky churro hands and a passion for one more time on the merry-go-round. We were supposed to savor their childhoods together, but you never know when you’ll take your last silly little train ride together. 

I think about him every day. 

But I don’t feel tethered to him in the way that I used to feel. He is everywhere, and he is also not from this current world. Too much has changed since he was here. That life we shared is not my life today; I am not the same person. The kids are not the same kids. You get to a point in the grief journey when you have exhausted the memories. It’s a movie you’ve watched a million times. You’ve analyzed the plot and dissected the characters. You’ve found the Easter eggs. The material has been covered and uncovered over and over again; it is seared into your mind and soul and no longer has to be said out loud, it’s part of your DNA. 

And also: time chips away at the details. You are no longer exactly sure how everything happened, even though you are simultaneously absolutely positive there is nothing new to talk about. Did he say he got a pocket knife from Calico as a child? Or was that from Sequoia? Did he run cross country, or was it track? Maybe I should have written it down. Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

I’ve learned in the grief journey that the more you try to hold onto everything, the faster it slips through your fingers like grains of sand. A cruel reality, but maybe a reminder that we are not meant to hold on so tight. It’s ok to let it go. What is important will float to the surface. That is what I trust. 

Kenneth has missed so much. That sad realization hasn’t faded in 9 years. It only makes me miss him more deeply. And also: 9 years have proven to me that I know I can live joyfully without him. Both truths can be held at the same time. It’s never one or the other. It’s always both. 

I made a list of songs that I wanted to hear at the Dead concert in Vegas. But as what usually happens in life, what ended up being my favorite song from the night— “Eyes of the World” — wasn’t on my list. I seem to have overlooked how wonderful the lyrics are until I heard them live, immersed in the sphere of lights and colors of the dancing images.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world

But the heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own

Wake now discover that you are the song that the morning brings

But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own

I went home and researched the song after the concert. There didn’t seem to be consensus on what the song means. I think it is supposed to be that way, conveying an emotional truth that is relatable, but not necessarily your truth. 

I remember Rev. Turner at the Orange County Buddhist Church talking about how songs can have various meanings depending on who listens to them. The song will land differently depending on the person. It doesn’t really matter what is said; it’s all about how it made you feel. We all have songs that got us through emotional times, happy times, stressful times, lonely times. My happy song could be your breakup song. We extract our own meaning. We relate to it differently. 

One review that I read called “Eyes of the World” too “hippy dippy.” I think hippy dippy is happiness. Maybe it is your ridiculousness. But I’m on team hopeful. 

I like the idea of remembering that I am the eyes of the world. I get to be a witness to the causes and conditions that let me and you be here. It feels like something to behold. 

We drink from the same spring. New configurations emerge. 

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home

Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone

Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own

I think about how I want to use my eyes of the world. How I want to see. My perspective and priorities. When you put it that way, it feels like such an important job. Not something to fall asleep at the wheel on. 

It makes me think of this beautiful Rupi Kaur poem:

“for you to see beauty here

does not mean

there is beauty in me

it means there is beauty rooted

so deep within you

you can’t help but

see it everywhere”

Nine years after Kenneth’s unexpected passing, I am convinced that the only thing to do is to keep seeing beauty everywhere. To find and savor as many bits of joy as you can. Take it all in and be grateful. 

This is the antidote to crushing grief. 

And more importantly, you realize that grief is not only the worst thing to ever happen to you, but also the most precious gift you’ll ever receive. You get to hold both of these truths forever in the treasure box of your heart.