Next Saturday is Halloween, and we are officially in “the spooky season” of the year. As some of you know, my nephew Chris hosts a wonderful podcast, How to Be a Better Human, for TED. In honor of Halloween, he interviewed Glynn Washington, the host and creator of the Spooked podcast. That got me thinking about one of my own spooky stories and the role these stories play in our lives.

Historically, ghost stories have taught morality, honored ancestors, and helped us process grief and our fear of death. They also offer a safe way to confront fear:we experience the thrill and adrenaline of being frightened while knowing we’re safe. And they shake up our perspective, making the familiar feel strange.

Many years ago, a close colleague unexpectedly committed suicide. None of us who worked with him knew he was in psychological distress. Coincidentally, he and I and two other colleagues went out for lunch a week before he killed himself. We ended up talking about death and suffering, not a typical topic for any of us to discuss at that time.

At some point, he said that when the suffering became great enough, he would kill himself. I was young at that time and couldn’t imagine any plausible reason for ending one’s life. I said to him, “T, how would you know when the suffering was enough?” He replied quite resolutely, “I WILL KNOW.” I still couldn’t believe that could be true, and said to him, “Well, when you die, give me a sign,” and he replied, “Okay.”

We found out that he had killed himself the morning after he died. That night and for two nights afterward, I saw his face in my bedroom window. He looked sad and almost sheepish. I was terrified. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I thought what I was seeing was real. His head was suspended in the darkness surrounding my window. I suddenly remembered our conversation at lunch.

On the third night, I had a dream. He and I were sitting on his bed, and I was begging him to not kill himself.  “You’re young, you have so much to live for, and we would all deeply miss you.” He kept telling me that I didn’t understand how awful his pain was and that he couldn’t take it anymore. To live with this amount of pain was inhumane and I shouldn’t ask this of him. I finally relented and let him go.  I watched him take a pill, lie back down and die. I woke up. After that dream, his face never appeared in my window again.

When I think about stories, this “ghost” story certainly helped me process my grief about his death. The experience gave me some amount of peace while at the same time deeply terrifying me. I haven’t shared this experience with many people before now, because I thought most people would think I was delusional.

One of the ideas that really struck me from Chris’s interview with Glynn was that we can hold two opposing ideas at the same time. Two opposing “truths” can be true. Your experience of the moment and mine might be diametrically opposed. Both can be real for us, even when our interpretations of what happened differ.

I just realized that T killed himself fifty years ago this year.

I don’t remember the exact date of his death, but I do remember in specific detail the terror and my quest to make meaning both of his death and my experience of his death. I still don’t have a definitive answer. The gift of sitting with this for fifty years is that I know that the answer is not as important to me as the journey.