Nothing to do with gardening

Once upon a time we went on a road trip to nowhere in particular.  Probably took the dogs, I don't remember really.  At one point somewhere in southern Maine we came across this house.  Obviously fallen into total disrepair - even the mailbox was sad looking.

When I see abandoned homes I always wonder about the lives that were lived there - what were the hopes and dreams that didn't come true and what caused the families that lived there to walk away. Did they leave for a better place or did they just give up in frustration and grief?

Below is what the house said to me  -  actually it nagged at me until I put in down on paper (or a screen).  It's a snapshot of a day in the life and probably wildly inaccurate - but this is what the house told me to say:

This old house -

Pushing aside the faded curtain she looked out over the field towards the river.  Bending forward she leaned her forehead on the window pane - briefly enjoying the cool feel of the glass against her skin.  “If I just knew what happened to him”, she mused silently – “if I only knew”. 

The field had no answer for her – no more than the river ever did.  She remembered how in the beginning they’d chosen their building site together because of that river.  You could look down across the field in the morning and see it glistening in the sun – walk down in the evening and watch the fish jump or, if it was a hot summer, jump in.  She half smiled as she recollected how scandalized the neighbors had been at the idea of a woman actually swimming!  He hadn’t cared a bit what they thought – just told her to at least keep her shift on!

Turning, she looked around the kitchen – it looked shabby even in the dim light that filtered through the grimy window.  Time was everything was spic and span but, then, it was a lot easier when the boys were still home.  Gives you something to go forward for when someone needs you.  They were sad when it happened but young appetites still had to be fed, clothes had to be washed, chores had to be done and somehow you put on a good face just so they wouldn’t know how bad it really was.

Now, of course, one was in the Army and the other was God knows where.  An occasional letter with a smudged postmark arrived saying that all was well but to really know how he was –impossible.  At least with the Army you knew where a body was - even if there never seemed time to come home. 

She remembered how she had felt at first. Looking back through the lens of years it hardly seemed more than yesterday.  Grief had moved with her through the days and grief lay down by her side through the white nights of sleeplessness.  It was like a macabre dance that could never end – a healing step attempted, sorrow pulling her back.  There was no escape from the cycle.  Unable to sleep she had fantasized that she would eventually be consumed and all that remained would be a fragile envelope of pain with nothing human remaining within.

It had amazed her that a loss could trigger such actual physically blinding pain.  You think of crying and you think “tears” – but you should be thinking “scalding” or “burning” or “bitter” because that is the way the acid tears of grief feel on your face.  You think “loss” and you imagine emptiness in your life.  You do not imagine an abyss that has swallowed up everything meaningful while threatening your very existence.  Grief was a void that opened under her feet until the very act of walking seemed to endanger her.