Ghost Catching with a Dress
by Dr Elizabeth
McCardell, M. Couns., PhD, Dip Clin Hypnotherapy
Nov 2013
I recently watched on
YouTube a very beautiful conversation among therapists and others talking on
the death of mothers. The phrase ‘ghost catching with a dress’ came up in
relation to finding clothing, letters, and treasured objects belonging to
mothers who had died. I was very moved by the image, for I have such items from
my own mother. Indeed, most of the crockery and utensils I use on a daily basis
were from the cupboards of my mother. Hanging in my wardrobe is a red coat my
mother made herself of the lining of officer’s coats during the war, there are
gloves she made, and there is a
dress she fashioned from silk that I only very vaguely remember her wearing to
a party once or twice. She was an extraordinary seamstress; a skill I entirely
lack.
Ghost catching with a
dress is, for me, the catching of glimpses of my mother’s life and story and
those others I have known and loved. Glimpses sewn into the gossamer of memory
– sometimes poignant and painful, sometimes sweet and tender.
Life, death. What are
these? When people talk of death, premature or after a long rich life, like my
mother’s, I wonder yet again, what it all means.
The taking of one’s
own life, throws another angle into the mix. There are many therapists who
express deep concern for those who contemplate their own death, and while I too
am disturbed by this, I am brought yet again to the existential place that I
face on a daily basis: What of life, what of death? I cannot see those who contemplate taking their own life as
a sign of mental illness. I cannot, for the same reason that I acknowledge
death as intrinsic to life and life intrinsic to death. What gets thrown up
into the air like wind in fallen leaves, is the integral mystery of existence
itself. I cannot sweep this knowledge, this subtle awareness I have, into a
neat pile to be put discretely into the rubbish bin. This is the greatest
mystery I know of. Death is not a medical problem and suicide is not a medical
condition. Death is, as life is, and relationships are.
What is caught in
suicide are ghost catchers of clothes, of toys, bric a brac, books and letters;
of the tears in memories, of hearts
broken, of anger, resentment, bewilderment, lots of questions unanswered. These
are perhaps more poignant than even the caught ghosts of those who died a
normal death.
I have had friends who
have died by their own hand and know something of the strangeness of this. One
man, I had shared a meal with only a fortnight before he gassed himself. Was I partly to blame? I could not think
so, for as the ghosts in cloth unravelled after the funeral, the threads
emerged of a life of disconnect, of
feelings of alienation and lostness. This poor friend could not speak of what he suffered and it is
here that my feelings are stirred, and it is now here that I offer myself as a
therapist to hear and share the burden of pain.
Death, and life, are
touched by the living in a fluid process and grief and loss are felt as those
we’ve loved move into another dimension. It is not so much the death bit that shakes
me, but the threads of life that are not always seen and understood; threads
that need, somehow, to be shaped into a dress to catch the ghosts of real flesh
and blood people in our stories, recollections, and a need for some kind of
farewell. We living need to let go and yet to remember and to let go and yet to
recollect. Our grief is not to be discarded mindlessly, but to be brought into
the fabric of our life to enrich us and also, mysteriously, give us the courage
to let go, let be that majesty that is life.
