Walking Through Final Recollections

When I began writing Final Recollections, I didn’t set out to write a ghost story. I set out to write a memory. To write the way a memory feels, not just what it holds.

Somewhere along the way, the voice that emerged wasn’t mine exactly, but the voice of someone remembering themselves from the other side. A presence, not an absence. A spirit, not quite gone.

This chapbook became my way of asking:

What lingers after we leave? What parts of us echo in places we once loved?

I. Shadows and Remnants

“To remember is sorrow.”

The ghost arrives. Or awakens. The house, the garden, the laughter trapped in the floors and curtains. They’re not just scenery. They are containers of memory.

The shadows here aren't frightening as much as they're mournful. I imagined a soul re-entering the ruins of its own life, finding fingerprints of joy and regret pressed into every surface.

The Latin phrase Meminisse dolor est holds this together: not just sorrow in remembering, but the beginning of healing.

II. Death’s Arrival

“Death is certain, its hour unknown.”

Suddenly, the tone fractures. Something is lost. The soul is no longer living, but not yet gone. Death enters as rupture, not peace.

This was written with the image of a storm: uninvited, irreversible. Yet the ghost clings to a legacy. A child’s face, a moment of warmth. Something left behind. Something still sacred.

III. Wander and Wonder

“We find by wandering.”

This is the liminal space. The in-between. The ghost doesn't search for answers so much as walk through absence, trying to remember why.

This section was born in my own uncertainty. The stars above feel like questions blinking back at us. And the fireplace, where old stories were once told, becomes the soul’s way of warming itself with what’s left.

IV. The Lullaby of Memory

“Let it rest in voice.”

This section is a quiet chapel. A hymn for those who loved us and are now voices in the quiet.

There’s a mother’s lullaby here. A father’s steady presence. Memory transforms from ache to echo. The Latin, Requiescat in voce, is a play on the classic Requiescat in pace. Let this spirit rest not in silence but in song.

V. Sea, Light, and Legacy

“Light in the darkness.”

Now the ghost expands. The sea becomes a place of crossing, and the lighthouse becomes light for others still wandering.

This is where we stop looking back in grief and start remembering with gratitude. The soul is no longer bound. It moves like tide. It glows like memory.

VI. Dreaming the Eternal

“Let there be light.”

This final section is my quiet homage to the beginning of all things.

In Genesis, the first act of God is not judgment or structure. It is light. “Fiat lux.” That sacred command doesn’t just ignite a sun. It breaks the silence, parts the darkness, and brings meaning where there was none.

I wanted to echo that moment here, not with fire and thunder, but with something gentler. A soul finding the same grace at the end of its journey that the world found at the beginning of its own.

Throughout Final Recollections, the ghost walks in memory, in longing, in the shadow of death. But here, in the closing verses, it is met not by fear, but by light. Not by silence, but by song. It’s the return to the garden we never stopped dreaming of. The fire that does not burn. The presence that speaks before words. The soul dissolves, not into nothingness, but into something eternal. It becomes part of what it always sought: light, love, and peace.