“Men and women who can't get over the past”

Aunt Evvie’s definition of ghosts—“Men and women who can't get over the past”—turns a supernatural image into a statement about grief and the living. Speaking to Trisha beside a coffin and a newly dug grave, she distinguishes the dead, who are gone, from those whose attachment to what has happened keeps them from living their own lives.

The Conversation with Trisha

Aunt Evvie addresses Trisha, who appears to her to be seeing ghosts. When Trisha asks what ghosts are, Aunt Evvie answers with the expression “Men and women who can't get over the past.” The definition is directed at Trisha’s distress: Aunt Evvie has already warned that until Trisha recognizes what is holding her back, it will not matter where she goes or what she does; she will have no chance to live her own life.

The explanation comes beside a coffin resting on its bands next to a coincidentally fresh grave. Aunt Evvie gestures toward the coffin as she rejects the idea that the dead themselves remain as ghosts. They have been buried, she insists, and are dead; the haunting belongs instead to the living who cannot release the past.

Meaning and Context

The expression shifts the idea of a ghost from a revenant to an emotional condition. Aunt Evvie does not deny Trisha’s grief or tell her that the past is insignificant. Rather, she separates grief from the continued presence of the dead: Trisha’s mother, Aunt Evvie’s nephew, and the man Trisha was involved with who died while she was away are all dead, even though Trisha still feels their loss.

That distinction gives the phrase its consoling force and its challenge. Aunt Evvie acknowledges that Trisha feels the dead’s absence, but argues that they do not remain to demand that she stay bound to them. The obstacle is not a literal ghost but the living person’s inability to move beyond what has happened. In the exchange, the definition becomes a pointed invitation for Trisha to reclaim the possibility of living her own life.