Big House

Big House December 3 2009


This house that fitted us so well

Is way too big for me alone.

I don’t feel radiant enough to fill it up,

Creating loving energy so powerful

It spills out forcefully on opening a door –

The way it used to do when we both lived here.

Yet, your spirit is still here with me,

Though in an altered form,

And as I write, I draw on it

For words and inspiration.

It’s hard to stay within the moment,

Not knowing what’s to come --

Just living fully in transition, joyfully, accepting loneliness.



Reflection:

In the months after you died, it seemed good to move furniture around, change the energy of rooms, try to make this house mine after it had been ours, try to soften the sadness of loss.

I sit now in our family room, remembering it as it was when we sat here together, sharing our enjoyment of the fire, perhaps watching television, or reading, or just chatting companionably. The house still feels big and empty. I fear I may not be big enough, forceful enough, to fill it with love, energy, cheer.

Creating a place that feels like “home” for myself has been an intense challenge – one I haven’t yet mastered. I feel great nostalgia for the other houses we shared – your wonderful Manhattan loft, and the beautiful house you created in Berkeley. But I know that if I were able to revisit them, they too would now seem sad, vacant, too quiet, deadened.

As I realize how I have failed to fill this house with joy and beauty since your departure, I’m filled with admiration at the masterpiece you created on 13th St, though living alone and feeling deeply lonely and isolated.

When we first started talking on the phone, you had been confined within that loft for several months, since breaking your paralyzed arm in a fall. The doctors didn’t know if the bone would knit, and felt that if they put it in a cast, it would not be able to heal. So you were ordered to stay in, to not go anywhere. It was similar to house arrest.

It had been a desperately hot summer, with rolling “brownouts” reducing or eliminating air conditioning. You had spent many days wearing only your underwear, steaming miserably, surviving before a small electric fan. No one came to see you. You ordered groceries and meals delivered from neighboring stores and restaurants. You had been miserable, depressed, forsaken. Your spirit had touched bottom, once again, as a result of the disabilities from your paralyzed arm.

Yet, when I first visited you, the apartment was awesomely beautiful, and filled with your life and spirit -- with warm, loving energy. It was magical to see you and then to step into your home for the first time. How did you do that?