Monday, October 31, 2011

New beginnings

Today, I woke up in my family home for the last time.

Something tells me it should be easier to move - afterall, I've moved to school for the past four years. But it isn't just the moving that breaks my heart.

It's saying goodbye to the memories that happened there. It's saying goodbye to the last standing reminder that I once had a family, a family that included a mom and dad that loved and honoured one another, a family that was once as sturdy as the rock out front that portrayed our family name.

I know that those memories will forever be in my heart. But there is something about a physical reminder, the physical four walls that do their best to support the family that resides within.

But sometimes, those walls just aren't strong enough.

Today I reminded of the lyrics in Chris August's song "7x70":

I've been living in this house here since the day that I was born.
These walls have seen me happy, but most of all they've seen me torn.
They've heard the screaming matches that made a family fall apart,
They've had a front row seat to the breaking of my heart.

This past weekend at home, I wandered through our home and memories flitted in front of me, memories I thought I had long forgotten. But it was that home that triggered those memories - the sight of the blue entrance tiles reminding me of our first puppy, the stairs making their way up to the second floor reminding me of the time Shelby fell and tangled her arm in the banister, the feel of the wooden floors on my feet reminding me of Christmases gone past where we sat gathered around the Christmas tree. How do I hang on to the memories, when everything in this world is trying to steal them from me? When time grasps at them, my parents' divorce papers try to erase them, and the words, "forgive and forget," try to grab them from me?

That house may only be a house, but it stands to me as a living reminder of what we once were. Now all I have are mere memories, memories that evade and escape me far too often.