Twelve short weeks after she died, an open home is held. Her house, opened for strangers to walk through and peer at, opening cupboards and turning on taps. A reluctant sale, twelve weeks doesn’t feel like long enough for the house to have sat empty grieving its occupant.
Her life has been packed away in twelve weeks. Packed into boxes and crates, split and moved throughout the houses of those of us left. Where once furniture sat, empty space now presides. Walls are devoid of pictures; rooms of furniture. What was once a home is now just a house. It’s been stripped of it’s essence of home, nothing more than walls and flooring.
I can’t feel her here anymore and that makes me sad.
Today, strangers walk through her house, deciding whether or not they will buy it. They leave fingerprints on the glass and footprints on the ground. They poke at the garden and imagine all that this house could be with them living there. Then they will decide whether or not that is what they want.
Yesterday I walked through the house trying to see it with strangers eyes.
That light switch is dirty. The window needs washing. That tap is cracked. It needs another bedroom, the carpet is clean, the pantry is huge…
And then I thought about it properly.
I planted that tree. I weeded that garden. There is where I played, where we dug, worked, wrote. I woke up to this view, I watched the birds bathing from here. Here is where I lay with a book, here is where I slept. There are the marks left from my paintings on the wall. Here is where I lived. Here is where I brought my newborn children to visit. I sat here and ate. I curled up here and cried.
More strangers will come after today.
Looking. Touching. Poking.
Soon, someone will offer to buy it. They will move in and place their things in the corners. They will sweep our ghosts out along with the dust and leave new memories littered across the floor.
Our ending will be become their beginning.
Twelve weeks does not seem like enough time to come to terms with that.
