My Basement is Haunted With the Ghosts of My Former Self Until I spent hours in my basement sifting through 17 years of memories, I had never seen the shadows of my past self.

My Basement is Haunted With the Ghosts of My Former Self

Until I spent hours in my basement sifting through 17 years of memories, I had never seen the shadows of my past self.

By Samantha Serum

Grief Book Club

Samantha Serum

Published in

Grief Book Club

The house, in 2007. Photo by the author.

“And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, — /And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow/There’s this little street and this little house.” ~ “Ashes of Life,” Edna St. Vincent Millay

My basement is full of ghosts, hiding behind every box and bin. As I sit on the steps, they seem to wander past me. First, the ghost of a college co-ed who has just realized the guy she just went on a date with was going to change the trajectory of her life.

Then the ghost of a college student who loved to road trip to a concert appears. The ghost of a small-town newspaperwoman comes out from behind the box of yellowed newspapers. The ghost of a newlywed, giddily in love and full of dreams for the future, drifts from a box of wedding napkins and tiny bottles of bubbles.

From the shelves of paint peeks the ghost of a young wife, daubed with paint, decorating the house above in hand-me-downs and thrift store finds. Flitting about, the ghost of a young mother, uncertain of every single decision because she so desperately wants to get motherhood right.

On the steps I see the ghost of a graduate student, studying in the basement because it’s the only quiet place in a home with a baby and a toddler.

In the corner by the washer and dryer, I glimpse the ghost of a stay-at-home Mom watching her marriage crumble. She comes to the basement to cry and sits on the floor leaning on the dryer, so the duet of the swishing washer and whirring dryer muffle her grief.

Walking in and out, blank-faced, is the eldest ghost. She’s the ghost of a woman approaching middle age. A tired automaton doing laundry, cooking dinner, going to work, soccer practice, play practice and PTO, on a looping, endless schedule– and completely lost to herself.

All of the ghosts are me. I thought I was just cleaning out my basement, but I kept meeting versions of myself that I thought had died.

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