Received 2012/01/30 03:11:16
OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I guess I should back up, back way up.
My name is Joseph Jeffery Lynch, but everyone calls me JJ. I died on August 22, 2010, when a car full of drunk coeds plowed into me, pinning me to the jungle gym at a Mickey D’s.
I found myself a ghost and went through a lot coming to accept that and dealing with the life that I had left behind and my loved ones. I’ve already written about all of that so I won’t go into it now.
I’m back because… well… I’m back because so much has happened, and the last time I did this it really helped me to get my head screwed back on.
To belabor the metaphor, my head is anything but screwed on right now. I am a huge mess. I have promised to tell the story of John for Tamara, so I was going to come here and do just that and nothing else. Let John talk, say what he needs to say, and just type it out.
But Banquo wouldn’t hear of it. Banquo is… well, I guess you would call him my mentor. He is the one that has been showing me and my best dead friend Jesus the ropes.
Jesus’s name is pronounced “Hey-Zues,” not “Gee-Zus,” as he is often fond of saying when he explains the pronunciation, “I don’t want be confused with the big fellow.”
You see, ghosts like me can move on. Moving “on” is a euphemism around here for, well, moving on to the next level. And just like the living talking about dying, there isn’t too much of a consensus about what that “moving on” is, just that it’s the next step. Those who die at peace move on right away and don’t end up like us ghosts. But moving on, answering the Call, is generally accepted to be a good thing, the next step. But I am not ready to answer the Call, I don’t want to move on, I don’t want to leave this world yet. And while I am here, I want to do something worth doing.
So I asked Banquo to be my mentor, to train me, to take me on as his apprentice. If I’m here, if I’m a ghost, I want to do things that matter. But, you see, I’m still kind of a mess from what I’ve just been through. Me being here and writing this is my way of processing it all, of getting over it, of grieving. And Banquo won’t teach me until I’m done.
Banquo used to be a professor of English Literature, and he has structured lessons he teaches to the newly dead, like me. His lessons are: 1) Cutting the Cord; 2) Appearance Matters; 3) Awareness, Awareness, Awareness; 4) Traveling; and 5) This is Not the End.
I am badly stuck on Lesson #4 and am eager to figure that one out. It is really a pain to have to fly everywhere and not be able to “pop” from place to place like most everyone else.
So, I’m going to be here day in and day out until I tell my story, until I can get some perspective, until I can move past it.
To be honest, I don’t know if what I am doing is a good idea. I mean, it’s good for me, but I worry about what it means for the world, for those that believe, for those that come to know there is an afterlife. It’s heady stuff, and frankly more philosophical than I am suited for, but the question rumbles around my mind. What happens when people “know” there is an afterlife and just don’t “believe” it? There is a huge difference between believing and knowing, and I am not so big a fool that I don’t know that such a transition could get messy.
So here I am and there is so much to tell. As I flew over I thought about how to tell the story and make it understandable. I really want to leap ahead and talk about Rhiannon, but honestly I think that it is too fresh and that I will lose my way if I try to do that. So, I am going to start right where the last story ended. I’ll take you through the whole thing and hopefully it will all make sense.
This is the end of the excerpt.