Uprooted

She wanders about the old place, lingering here and there to soak in the memories one last time. The house is in total chaos, her children busily scrambling about with various tasks. She directs their efforts, but her heart just isn’t in it. The accumulated treasures of a lifetime are being lovingly packed and sorted by the assembled throng of children, friends and grandchildren. Trucks and trailers line the driveway, waiting to receive the neatly packaged contents of a home she’s lived in for over thirty years. This whole affair has been quite a shock for her and it shows in the concern and fatigue on her normally smiling face.

There’s the china she received from her mother, the furniture she’s lovingly dusted and polished to a brilliant gloss, photo albums, vacation memorabilia, school projects her children made for her, and the millions of little things that one accumulates over the course of a long and fruitful lifetime. These things can be moved of course, but the memories attached to them are a different matter. Every particle of the old place evokes memories and she hears all of them clamoring for a last visit before the cosmic tranquility is permanently broken.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the new place, but it’s not the same. As her treasures are transferred, she stops by to supervise their delivery and placement for later unpacking. The new house is rapidly becoming a warren of trails through many stacks of boxes and furniture. The physical work of transferring everything will be ably handled by others, but the monumental task of sorting and placing it will be to a large extent her sole domain. It’s going to take some time for her to create a new nest here and even longer to overcome the loss of the old one. But in the end, she’s a tough old bird; she’ll roll up her sleeves and one box at a time she’ll create a new home. And soon the holidays will come, and her new nest will be filled with the love of her extended family as she once again holds court and continues collecting her precious memories of home and hearth and family.

God bless you Phyllis.

Scottie