David McElroy

I’ve found you a thousand times
I guess you’ve done the same
But then we lose each other
It’s just like a children’s game
— Harry Chapin, “Circle”

The warm breeze was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle that evening. There was still enough light to see, and the fading sunset made the sky colorful as the light dimmed and the shadows lengthened. But the honeysuckle scent is what I remember most.

I don’t know why that particular night remains with me. I was about 9 years old and I was one of seven or eight children playing hide-and-seek around the neighborhood. Our house was the center of the play area. There were a couple of houses to the left and one other to the right. There was a meadow behind our house — and an old, unused barn beyond that. It seemed that we played for hours.

Nobody wanted to stop, but it eventually got too dark to see. We split up to go to our own homes — happy with the games and ready to resume our hide-and-seek play on another day.

This memory came to my mind strongly tonight. And it suddenly occurred to me — for the first time in my life — that this sort of game helps prepare children for what’s ahead in their adults lives.

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She never really goes away, but she’s also never really there. Like a ghost from another life — a life which I once lived with her — she haunts my dreams and intrudes on my waking hours.

It’s not convenient to live with a ghost from the past. My conscious mind has buried her over and over again. But just when I start thinking I’ve won the long struggle to put her behind me, I remember she’s still in this world. And it all comes flooding back.

Her face. Her eyes. Her voice. Her words. Her habits and her thoughts. Her goodness and her fatal flaws. And then I can’t stop the tidal wave of emotions. It exhausts me, because I’m left with nothing but unanswered questions.

As I walked down an aisle of a grocery store late Saturday night, I suddenly heard something in my heart ask, “Do you still miss me? I still miss you.”

And I felt her presence. She was there. But she was there as a shimmering ghost from the past, not as a real woman who could love me or answer my questions.

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In high school, I hated pep rallies — but I wasn’t sure why.

I just knew I felt uncomfortable when the band was playing and everybody was excited and cheering. I felt oddly out of place. I never told anybody this, but I felt embarrassed of myself. I didn’t clap or cheer or whatever else the crowd around me was doing.

I felt horribly conflicted, although I didn’t understand that at the time. Part of me was excited by the music and cheering and chanting — but I was afraid to let myself go. I was afraid to feel anything. And that made these public displays of emotional frenzy seem very dangerous to me.

I felt coldly numb as I grew up. In middle school, some kids laughingly called me “Spockelroy,” which was someone’s clever mixture of “Spock” and “McElroy.” I was the brilliant rationalist who didn’t feel anything — and who never expressed emotions.

I understand why now.

The loss of my mother had hurt me more than I understood. My fear of my father’s unpredictable narcissistic rage was constant. I had learned that I got into trouble if I expressed my unhappiness.

I learned to remain numb. Not to feel. It was how I survived.

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