“But ghost stories show us a different concern, hidden under our bluster: we hope that the dead won’t forget us. We hope that we, the living, will not lose the meanings that seem to evaporate when our loved ones die.
My own grandmother died, quite unexpectedly, when I was seventeen. I realize that it sounds absurd to say that about somebody who blew out the candles on her eightieth birthday cake in a hospital bed, but it was my first encounter with death, and it was unexpected to me. In my own naïve way, I expected her to get better and come home.”