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Not every absence is caused by death. Some vanishings are quieter; more treacherous. The versions of us that we were meant to become often go missing without funeral or farewell. The singer silenced by fear. The wanderer caged by duty. The lover who stayed silent too long.

We confidently leave behind these versions of ourselves in the shadowy corridors of our mind, forging ahead as if nothing was lost. Yet memory , that curious, relentless force, constructs its own museum. It’s an undeniable space within us, where all our unfinished selves reside… complete in their incompleteness, patient, and vibrantly alive.

What if! tonight! you were to walk those halls?

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I walked through halls of hollow men,
their faces soft with never-lived years,
Mothers without children,
Lovers without names,

Dreamers without dreams to bleed.
Some raised arms in frozen greeting,
Some shielded eyes from eternal dusk,
Some had hearts but no mouths,

Some had spines without will,
Some, only shadows of what might have been.
And they whispered not words, but weight.
The grief of being almost.

The ache of nearly.
The curse of not quite.
The unbearable heaviness
of the half-born soul.

And I!
I felt them cling to me.
Versions of myself long starved,
Long abandoned, calling me Father,

Calling me Traitor,
Calling me Home.
What becomes of those we did not become?
Where do the unborn fragments of us go?

The writer who never wrote,
The dancer who sat still,
The forgiver who clenched his jaw
till death.

I looked into their eyeless faces
and understood!
We do not outgrow our ghosts.
We carry them.

We do not leave behind the past.
We leave behind ourselves.
And here they wait!
the unborn, the unlived!

Not statues!
But mirrors!

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Perhaps that is what growing older truly means, not just the process of creating new versions of ourselves, but also the gentle journey of turning back to embrace those parts we once left behind. To wander through the quiet halls of our regrets, not merely as a passerby, but as a compassionate healer. To kneel beside each forgotten self, the brave, the foolish, the tender, the unfulfilled; and softly whisper, “You are welcome here. I see you. I choose you still.”

Perhaps heaven is nothing more than this.

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