Pathways

My house is almost completely packed and I move in a week. I am living amidst boxes and rolled up carpets and a somewhat disturbed cat. As I move about these rooms that I’ve lived in for almost twenty-five years, I pause here and there to remember. Remember when Bruce discussed his plans for building a screen porch and how I argued with him that we’d never use it? Well, we did. Yesterday I took down his moose bell that he used to ring to let me know it was cocktail hour. Remember when we made the big decision to get rid of the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom and we never missed it? Remember when we set up the Christmas tree in the bay window and made sure to only put unbreakable ornaments on the bottom branches because Max and Woody liked to run underneath with their tails held high knocking off everyone?

There are two reasons why I’m moving – one is the house is much too much for one person. Too much outside work for me to manage any more, too many stairs, too many rooms. The practical side of me needs a one story house with little or no maintenance to deal with and I found a house that fits that bill. The other reason is what I described above. Every inch of this house, every window, every floorboard, every wall, every room, holds a memory. It gets overwhelming at times and I need a new place to live, one with fewer physical reminders that will allow me to both honor my past and navigate my new life a little more easily.

Today I was making my bed and looked out over our backyard, every inch of which Bruce pruned, bordered, planted, rototilled, mulched, weeded and sweated over. It’s beautiful in the spring, summer and fall but it’s beautiful in the winter in a different way. For one, I can better see the pea stone path that he made to the gate at the back of the property. He worked so hard on that, cutting out the sod, laying down landscape fabric, hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the stone. It’s really lovely and I enjoy looking at it, as I enjoy looking at all my gardens. But, and don’t get all nervy about my being corny, there’s a message there. It involves the building of paths – the physical ones and the virtual ones. Bruce built me a path so I could walk out of the back gate into the woods. He built me a virtual path of love and respect, service and sacrifice and humor and intelligence. That’s the path I walk today. I’m walking right out of the gate into a new life where I can make new memories, all the while holding his memory tightly with both hands.