The Lifecycle of Ghosts

The Sober Curator
May 2025

By Chelsea Pegues 

Cleaning out my childhood home, I ponder the downfall of my family. Within five years, I lost my father to addiction and my mother to dementia.

I grew up an only child, raised by an alcoholic father and a mother with PTSD and mental illness. As I pack up my mother’s house after moving her to a nursing home, I reflect on what it means to break the cycles of abuse while grieving two parents- one disappearing into the depths of dementia and one whose addiction took him too soon.