It’s always difficult to re-enter my real world–the one where I have a husband and children– after spending time “back home.”
By ‘back home’ I mean the place where I grew up. My folks still live in the house I came home from the hospital to: the tile on the bathroom floor is still the same white-checker-board-with-black-tile-middle that I stared at as a kid. My 10-year-old signature still dons the wall on the cellar stairs. That place where my cousin Peter jumped from my bed and mistakenly put his head through the wall still shows through the 35 year-old-plaster patch job my Dad did (Peter was, mercifully, okay). And the lamps I used to rub on my mother’s bureau, pretending they were the bottle on the TV show “I Dream Of Jeannie” are still there. They say “you can’t go home again” but in my case, not only can you go home, you can take a tour of what used to be.
It was this way this weekend, when I traveled 3 thousand miles to say good-bye to my godmother, who’d lived in the same house next-door to mine for more than 50 years. Though remodeled a bit more than my folks’ house, Darlin’s home still resembles the place I ran over to to visit, hang out, play, escape sibling strife, wash cars, and in one long stretch, polish silver weekly in a 6th-grade effort at making money. I never signed any walls over there but if those walls could talk they’d have a lot to say about me and my romps next-door to see Darlin and Prez–her husband and my godfather. 46 years of living is a long time to make memories.
So it was difficult to say good-bye this past week–not just to my godmother, but also to her house. Of course her place will be lived in from now until its eventual sale–but it won’t be hers; she’s no longer here. And that reality, as strange as this sounds, makes her passing as difficult and as heart-wrenching as her actual death. It’s one thing to let my godmother go: it’s another thing to say good-bye to her home.
Why is this? I have no idea.
What is it about walking over there more times than I can remember–for cocktails, for coffee, for conversations, for counsel–you name it, I did it–that embedded itself into my heart and soul? I slept there, ate there, cried there, laughed there, answered the phone, took in the mail, polished tea sets, raked the leaves, even mowed the lawn–I guess that makes it my second home? And from the looks of my first home–with all the elementary-style Crayola tattoos I gave it– my memories are strong and lasting. They are memories of what once was and what I can still revisit: but next door I suppose–with my godmother’s passing–those memories can neither be made nor visited any more. Is that why it hurts?
That’s life, I know. That’s the way it goes for all of us, eventually. One day it will be my childhood home that no longer holds my heart and soul. I’m not going to like it then, either.
I am not certain why it is this way but I have learned that with death there are two endings: the life that has lived and died, and the house that was a home for all those who loved there. And in the case of my godmother, I was certainly one of ‘those.’
While I still don’t get this whole house-means-sadness thing, I do know one thing: if my heart breaks this much at a next-door buidling, there must have been a damn beautiful place inside there–for many moments of my life– that I got to call my own. And while I hate this strange new lesson in my life, I know I am so very lucky to have known someone who made me feel so very welcome in her life, in her heart, in her soul, in her home,
and in her house.
