Bag of Bones: the honesty of grief, and the healing nature of love.

I started reading Bag of Bones because a dear friend sent it as a Christmas gift. It was her favorite book, and we’d often shared lengthy conversations about the power of literature and storytelling, so she assumed I’d love to read it. Once the book arrived, it sat on my bookshelf for months. I repeatedly told myself that I’d get to it, but time and time again, I put it off.

“I’ll read it tomorrow,” I’d say to myself as I walked past the book wedged between an autobiography of Kobe Bryant and Bill Simmon’s Book of Basketball.

But tomorrow would come, and again, I would walk past the book wondering what Stephen King had to say. It was this way for months. I would stare at Bag of Bones, and it would stare back — calling me. Begging for me to open its khaki-colored pages and start reading.

It was on a random Thursday afternoon, between classes and homework, that I finally answered King’s call. I didn’t know what to expect, nor did I necessarily think a book written by the aforementioned author could affect me so deeply, but it did.

There was something to Bag of Bones that was so captivating. Each sentence was like a lure, pulling me deeper and deeper into the world of Michael Noonan, Mattie, and Kyra. There was depth to each character. There was a heart behind each individual's actions. There was a story wrapped up in every piece of dialog and every scene written by King. And in a world that was two-dimensional, Bag of Bones found a way to dance in my mind as a three-dimensional existence.

Maybe it was the grief of Noonan after he lost his wife? Maybe it was the fear of Mattie — Kyra’s mom — stuck wondering if she was a good enough mother, even though she lacked both money and power? Maybe it was the distinct feeling of love lost, gained, and lost again? Or maybe, Bag of Bones reminded me of my own temporal finite existence?

Whatever it may be that pulled me into the world King created, it provided a cathartic answer to the question of humanity's own existence. King provided a window to look through and observe grief, fatherhood, friendship, and torment. He captured the essence of what it meant to be a human in suffering and a human in healing.

Through Noonan and Kyra, King reminded me that we are all one step above a bag of bones. So by paragraph one, of page one, in chapter one, I was hooked. The world was King’s, Noonan was his proxy, and I was nothing but a fly on the wall in search of desperate answers to the plots probing questions.

“‘Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there… The most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.’ I understood because that was what I felt like in those minable, dissembling days: a bag of bones.”

The aspect of Noonan, the main character in the novel, that I found endearing to my own struggle was his simple nature as a writer. He — far more successful than I — had a way with words that enthralled his readers into the tender caress of the worlds he meticulously created. His books captivated the hearts of many and intrigued the minds of some.

Yet, as he writes, he losses a sense of himself in his creation. A part of his story, though told, is lost forever. He exercises some phantom muscle all writers have. And he fears the day that muscle no longer functions at its peak. He fears writer's block. What writer doesn’t?

The death of his wife brings about that worst fear, and for years he lives off of a backlog of stories he’s written — it's enough at the moment, but eventually, the well runs dry. And by the midway point in the first half of King's book, no untolled stories are left to carry this version of Noonan; a man who no longer finds the interesting in the unassuming and the intriguing in the mundane. So he sets out on a journey to rediscover who he is as a man and as a writer. It just so happens to be that he’s haunted by ghosts along the way.

“Perhaps sometimes ghosts were alive — minds and desires discovered from their bodies, unlocked impulses floating unseen. Ghosts from the id, spooks from low places.”

As I read so tenderly about Noonan’s journey through Sarah Laughs and the remotes parts of Maine, I couldn’t help but draw the similarities of his challenges and mine. His sleepless nights, my sleepless nights. His battles with anxiety, my battles with anxiety. His loss of self, my loss of self. His nightmares, my nightmares. His ghost, my ghost. What made Noonan so relatable was that he reminded me, the reader, that we all have ghosts, that for a majority of our lives, go unseen.

The ghosts exist on the peripheral of our lives, right out of the reach of our sight, but present in their unannounced presence. The ghosts haunt our subconscious, and they torment our dreams, prompting us to run from fears that are left unsaid but manifest in our everyday actions.

Fruits of our ghost’s labors present themselves as novelty items. The need to post on social media. The need for someone to constantly be texting us. The need for constant approval from strangers. The need to be seen as cool in the eyes of many. All of these actions are just symptoms of our unmanaged poltergeists.

Noonan’s ghosts are of the spiritual vein, but that does not mean they don’t apply. Their effects in his life, I found, were similar to the effects of the ghosts in mine. His constant need for validation. His dejectedness when things didn’t go his way. The need for acceptance, but the feeling of isolation. The only difference I found in his ghosts, compared to mine, was the results they coveted. His ghost wanted blood and vengeance, while mine sought validation and acceptance.

There was a point in the story where Noonan almost gave in to his ghosts — they presented an alluring reality. His ghosts offered him peace, but at a price. Sound familiar? My ghosts offered me the same bait. They presented an alluring reality, but it came at a heavy price. I had to be something I wasn’t, say things I didn’t mean, and disconnect from the practicality of the natural world. I had to live life virtually, seeking this resolve of an acceptance that often left me with the insatiable feeling of isolation. Though I never saw my ghosts, as Noonan did, they still dictated the quality of my consciences. Their haunting subtle; in the swipe of a finger and the click of the button.

I found that my ghosts haunted me at the same times Noonan’s did. They didn’t surface until a tragedy, and they didn’t subside until I found a way through its pain. Noonan’s ghosts came from his dead wife. My ghosts came from the passing of my grandma and my fear of emotions. Suppression only gave my ghosts validation in their existence. And with every undealt with heartache, they grew stronger, and their pull more alluring with reality more illusive. My technology ghost comforted me when it needed to. It held me when I felt down. It told me that the people behind this glass screen cared about my existence only if I impressed them, brown-nosed them, and showed them that I belonged. It taught me that love was conditional.

Noonan’s ghosts did the same.

They gave back his ability to write. They allowed him to feel love again. They connected his existence with meaning and told him that it was ok to be who he was. His ghosts provided liberation, but it was only conditional. And that condition was the sacrifice of the child he’d grown near to during his rediscovery, Kyra. When faced with the decision, Noonan chose not to make the sacrifice, and in doing so, he saved Kyra and himself along the way.

He never overcame his writer's block, but he didn’t need to. Instead, he found a new purpose in life. He was on the other side of grief, alive, rejuvenated, and whole. Not many humans reach that point after grief and love lost take hold. Noonan was an oddity, but one that reminded me to keep moving forward in self-discovery. He told me to not give into my ghosts, regardless of how foreboding their presence feels. He taught me that the ugliness in grief is ok and that the pain in fear is valid. In a strange way, Noonan’s ghosts showed me that it's ok to feel human — a feeling I’ve tried to avoid for a year. He centered me, slapped me in the face, and told me there was more to life than my ghosts and unkempt fears. After that uncomfortable conversation, on his way out, he also told me that the only way to get to the “more” in life, is to first go through hell.

“In the time between now and whenever the Outsider remembers me and decides to come back, there must be other things to do, things that mean more than those shadows… I’ve put down my scrivener’s pen. These days I prefer not to.”

The reason Bag of Bones is so endearing is that it’s a humanistic perspective at the arch of grief. It’s not preachy, nor is pretentious. It’s humble, and it's honest. Very rarely is the arch of grief linear. And very rarely do you ever return to who you were before the tragedy took place.

When you find yourself down on your luck or haunted by your ghosts, pick up Bag of Bones. At the least, it will show you that the human spirit, haunted by ghosts or not, has an unbridled ability to keep fighting in the midst of dire circumstances.

The book still speaks to me. If you read it, may it speak to you too.

“This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time.”