A House Remembered

Houses are adventures and  they are heartbreakers.

Every nook and cranny can trigger a memory.

Have you ever had a house you loved so much it basically imprinted on you even though it wasn’t even yours?

Where you and your family shared so many moments that the house became your home too...

Where you could describe any color of any room and could draw a scaled floor plan of every twist and turn including every nook and cranny-with your eyes closed...

Where you knew exactly the spot where the floor sloped in the upstairs bathroom...

Where you and your band helped save a kitchen after a waterline break right above your head...

Where you attended your first party in your “newly moved to” town after losing your past life and didn’t even realize you had just met all your new best friends...

Where your daughter and her BFF got busted by the police for jumping wildly on the trampoline at 2am...

Where you daughter can show you every secret spot she played hide + seek in with her best friend until they grew out of their childhoods together...

Where you know every placement of decoration/art in every bathroom in the house cause you peed there so many times...

Where you hid on the stairs between songs, scared and exhilarated to be singing for all of your friends...

Where you celebrated your birthday by eating fried oysters at the smaller cleanup party following the epic house party every year... 'cause that was YOUR favorite party. Less people and more oysters.

A house you knew so well you can still smell it.

Where you sat in the bed for hours and hours swapping funny stories with your dear friend while the fall breeze billowed and whipped the floor length curtains in the this old Victorian house... 

Where you folded laundry that was not your own to help sooth the pain... 

Where you rubbed your friends feet on the big stuffed couch to give her some blessed comfort before she left this world...

Where you danced and sang from the crumbling slanted porch and thought how lucky you were to have been brought into the embrace of this house and these amazing people...

This house left us today. It took with it all the physical mementos and the two beloved kitties that brought so much comfort to their people.

The smell is gone. The sloped floor
Is gone. The billowy curtains. The wayward porch.

Besides the humans, only the instruments - the music - was saved. And our memories.

With those instruments we’ll make new memories, but today our friends are not dancing. Our faces show tear streaks through the soot and we cannot even hug to show our love while we grieve yet another loss.

P.S., The young woman who I love as my own daughter -- who lost her mother this past Fall, her dog the night before, and then her beloved cats -- smelled the smoke, found the fire and screamed! 3 people I love got out before the house erupted in flames. The house was gone in less than an hour. The fire burned back any attempts to save it.

I can’t help imagining that if there is a place where souls go, including the souls of a home, they are all with Dana now. Her horse, her beloved dog, her cat, her art, her books, her dollhouse, her wild clothes. Maybe she has them all with her now. A giant Victorian filled with love.