Empty Rooms

Maybe you have had to go through the belongings of loved ones who have passed. Maybe part of your job is cleaning out the basement, the garage, or sorting important photos. In the end, houses are just houses, but they contain lives and memories.

Just a building for human habitation, but also for the occasional pet, and the friends and neighbors that pass through. The space of a home is transformed by the inhabitants, by their love or connection. It lingers after they’re gone. It lingers as those who love them remember.

Then there are all the things that we collect. The special dishes passed down from grandma, the paintings on the wall, mom’s seashell collection. The map of our lives etched across the spaces. For a lifetime all these things gathered together represent a home and lives lived. Before the winds of time scatter the pieces never to be assembled in the same pattern again.

What piece can I take with me? What can I hold onto? A necklace, your favorite chair, the present I gave you last Christmas. Maybe I can take what you taught me of grace during your illness, of strength during adversity, of courage to face the next day and then the next. I see your footprints in the sand. Left to follow. It was a beautiful seashell, whose inhabitant has gone but left a bit of herself behind.