Empty Rooms.

into the rubble

An era is coming to an end. The Stroud family home will be no more. The last days are coming upon us fast. Days and endings I don’t think I ever really considered before. The house has always be a safe haven, just knowing it was there in times to reset or just go home to remember memories and why you left in the first place.

Mom always reminded us, there was a place to come to. Even when she was not at the house very much, traveling from place to place, discovering America, sharing her journey with her Cousin Teresa, or her male friend Lee, with whom she spend much of her last years with traveling back and forth from Vermont and Myrtle Beach, and scatter journeys home for Holidays and family events.

Mom’s passing in mid May from Alzheimer’s set into motion the closing down and sale of the Stroud home, She is in need of major repair that no one seemed to be able to find time or money for. The taxes where eating at the extra dollars that could go into repairs. I had not worked a job in some time and my photography and Reiki practice just didn’t bring the substance in the realm of finance.

After only a few viewers during the summer of the house, we thought it was just going to sit. We nudged the realtor a bit and one of the prospective buyers offered a price with could live with at the mid November. So the rush was on the clear out the house.

Closets where explored, basements where lit in places that hadn’t seen light in ages, the attic was peered into. Draws and boxes covered in dust and years of memories forgotten where opened, much discarded. Others claimed by family members who which to have it in their homes now. It still all needed to go.

As each day came and went the more difficult the feelings of frustration and lost would visit. My sister who has been the major force in this adventure to clear out everything due to the fact she lived here her whole life, until three years ago when they moved to a new home of their own.

I witness her stress and discomfort each time she arrives, her first reactions are fraught with anger, a bit a banging around soon to be soothed by action of getting things done.

There is less than two weeks left to accomplish this task. The rooms are emptying, the dust has been cleared away, the trash, recycle, and the pickers have been here, a few more will come to take the bigger pieces of furniture for the needy. Trips to Goodwill by my brother-in-law have been so frequent that he reports the store personal grimace upon his arrival in the late hours of their day.

My move will most likely happen this weekend. I am the last resident of the house, that is Muffin and I. We had a journey here that will be a life long unfolding of emotions, and memories. I had vision of the living in the house, making it sustainable for me

, yet it is time to let go, time to let the empty rooms be renovated, and filled with a new family’s life dreams.

The empty rooms once filled with necessary objects as well as family collections from each member are gone. The memories will still be part of who we each are depending on how we hold and embrace them.