When I open the front door, it resists and screeches on the brass plate at the base. The familiarity is comforting. It used to be annoying. Someone should fix this, I used to think. Someone.
The piano is gone, the Grandfather clock is gone, the rugs relocated, her desk is in my office now, his desk has a bright green post-it note on it to tell the movers tomorrow that it goes to my house. The house is wooden floors and echos now. There are no paintings, no prints, no framed photos on the walls, but the hooks remain. Their presence yells at me, screams that they used to have a purpose, and now nothing. Vacancy. The empty spaces are loud with absence. The house is so loud without them, without us. Loud like a hole in the window, like the wind when you're alone. Loud like the silence you didn't notice before that moment when you realize sound is gone.
In the corner of the formal dining room is a cluster of small tables, two lamps, four boxes of books, two mirrors neatly stacked, a vase. These will go to my house. Last weekend I packed 35 boxes of books, opening each one, touching the pages, saying goodbye, a part of my parents and a piece of me packed with each. Parts never to be reclaimed, parts always gone, sent forward, set alive again when another cracks open the book. Ghosts will flutter but no one will know. Is that magic? I think so. Is that perfect? Yes. Oh, yes.
When I look at this move as if it were a project that I am called to manage, I can handle it. Easy enough, yeah? Just organization, direction, management. When I look at this move with the realization that I'm breaking down a home, it's on the south side of difficult. It's hard, it's taxing, and it hurts.
Tonight, I will sleep in the empty house, and it will be my last time. I will bring my life and my heart and my memories there. Cheyenne will swim in the pool and I will sit on the patio and sip champagne. I will play the stereo at a volume I choose, and I will sleep in my parents' bed. Before it's broken down, before the room changes. On the last night their room remains in tact, whole, them. It's a tall order I'm asking of myself, but also something I want to do. There's a need in me that marks change this way, celebrates, honors it, dedicates myself to it and place myself there.
I believe in my faith, believe in magic, and I believe in the comforting and healing power of memories. I want to absorb everything tonight. I want to sleep with them, one last time. Sleep in the arms I remember and can bring forth, sleep in the shadows of their presence, sleep in this home that was theirs, ours, one last time. I want to hear the voices, see the memories, recall the life we put into that house. I want to be stripped raw by the emptiness and put myself together again by the love. I want it to touch me, become me, absorb and digest me, while I sleep.
I want to walk through the halls and cry out, I miss you. I want the drama, the pain, the whole of it. That house and I, we have a date tonight. A very personal, painful, beautiful date.
7 comments:
If you had not availed yourself of this opportunity to say Good Bye you would have regretted it for a long time. Most people would have run from the pain and the fear of emotion; however, the ability to relive that life and appreciated it for what it is/was is what allows you to think (and write) on a plane that the majority of the population would never truly understand… congrats.
Enjoy, cry, laugh, ponder the experience.
How is that Champagne? Wet dog+good booze=serenity. Hang in there.
Alison, May you find some peace in this. I'm glad you have Cheyenne with you.
Alison, though I haven't been commenting lately, I have been reading. What a change to go through. One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, once wrote that being the only child of deceased parents is like being the last survivor of a lost civilization. Though the circumstances are different, I imagine you're feeling something very similar. In a way, your blog is like an archeologist uncovering that lost world for us.
My parents are both in their seventies. This past January, I flew up to Chicago to attend my uncle's funeral. My uncle, who was my father's older brother. When my father made the comment to me that he was the eldest male Hoffman still alive, I knew one day in the not too distant future, I'd be flying up for his funeral.
I'm not looking forward to it.
But, having read your process of going through all this, I think mine will be a little easier now.
Thank you.
Not many things in life are harder than saying goodbye, but you're doing it the way you seem to do everything: with grace and dignity.
Someone, somewhere, will read your words and be comforted to learn that you've struggled through the same human experiences and emotions that are confronting them. It may not be your intent, but your words shine like beacons, lighting a path through darkness.
Thank you for allowing us to follow you on this difficult journey.
peace and strengt, sis. these i pray for you.
Alison, Just checking up on you. I hope your night in the house went well.
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