Memories

Spirit Places April 26 2010



Bare shined floors, stripped now of rugs,

Purified of foot prints, cleared of scuff marks –

Pristine.

Windows washed and clear,

Rooms now unencumbered – no furniture, no projects

That lie about unfinished – eternal paper clutter.

No remaining signs of our four years of living there –

Now a fallow house, awaiting its new life –

My home no more.


Silenced now the shrill joyous cries of children

Racing up the walk to Grandma’s house,

The sound of bouncing balls and happy laughs --

They faintly echo in my heart amid the emptiness.



I speak and hear reverberations -- void. .

I open the toy closet – bare.

I enter our offices and bedroom – blank,

Though I feel in each room its ghostly memories –

Faint shadows of what happened there for us.


Bookshelves -- now just empty wooden cubes – are yawning shadow boxes.

With no clothes, the closets are stripped down to cabinets and rods –

Reminding me of our excitement when we built just what we wanted,

Deciding it was worth it, hang the cost.


The big surprise was when I bade farewell to my dear friends, my trees.

I loved the woods around that house – the trees and wildflowers were my friends.

My spirit frolicked with the birds and squirrels, trembled with the wind- blown leaves.

It was my little patch of Eden, where my soul found rest and joy.



Today I said goodbye,

I laid a crystal underneath the porch --

Giving thanks

For good memories and sad, good moments and hard – the life the house embraced for us.


It’s time to move forward, to give back, to mark the present,

To fully be in peace and love while taking leave.

A raucous crow, calling in the woods, tells me goodbye. I walk away.


Reflection:


It was wonderful to see that others really wanted our fabulous house. It sold quickly – in a few days. I’m happy to know that the buyers are excited about living in the house. I feel satisfaction in having been a good steward of a beautiful place, caring lovingly for its needs and putting good energy into it.

As the closing approaches, I felt drawn to visit the house a last time, walk through it, create a final memory of it as it awaits its next family. It’s my home now only in remembrance. It was time to release it, to say goodbye, to extend good wishes to the people destined to live there next as they create their own recollections of growing, loving, creating a home within its walls. Their recollections will overlay ours, as ours have overlain those of the family that built it and grew up in it before us. With passing years, the house grows richer in loving energy and acquires the patina of respectful care and use. It has been a home before and will be one soon again, though now, in waiting, it’s just an empty house.

I take my times there with me, packed into memory. I move through life, collecting more and more recollections. Happily they take up no space and weigh nothing!