THE HOUSE

I was thinking about the house I sold last year. It was the house where Linda and I lived for over nineteen years and shared many happy times. The poet Edgar A. Guest said it right: “It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.” Linda and I did a heap of living there. We loved Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and its people.

Our first two grandchildren spent five summers with us, and they enjoyed our pool and exploring along the creek that bordered our property. I built a sandbox for them and painted their names on the sides. Not too many years later, when the boys had long outgrown sandboxes and the wood was rotting, I very sadly tore it down. That happy episode became a memory.

Then it was only Linda and me. We enjoyed walks along the Lake Huron beach, colorful autumn drives along the Lake Superior shore, visits to lighthouses, sailing on Caribou Lake, and sharing thoughts about anything and everything. That sharing I so treasured began to fade in October 2019. Our walks in the country became more silent. Linda’s mind seemed far away. Her cognitive functions deteriorated, gradually at first, but much more rapidly after her bout with pneumonia in late November. On January 19, 2020, she was gone.

So I ask myself now: How do I feel about that house? What does it represent for me? Do I feel nostalgia for it? Perhaps in time (if I have more time) I’ll feel differently, but my most powerful memory of that house is devastating loneliness. That house, the yard with its flower gardens Linda planted and the abandoned vegetable garden Linda tended so diligently, are all testimonies to her absence. Emptiness best describes my final two years in that house.

So I can and must move on. Hope lies ahead—ultimately in heaven.