Thoughts from Friday October 30, 2020
My spirit is overflowing this quiet evening. Beautiful, deep, powerful, spilling over so that I can hardly even put words to it all.
Time has traveled full circle and I didn't notice until today. The way loss has threaded through the last fifty years is so vivid in my mind's eye. Memories in rapid succession are replaying.
We went to the farm today, Dad and my sister Charmaine and I. The farm signifies the beginning of a family and it was also the ending of another. This beautiful acreage of land housed the height and depth of life.
Just miles away is that time-frozen intersection where I lost my mother in what I will always refer to as a tragedy. In an instant my father wore the label of widower of three small children.
In a city, some 60 minutes away a devastated widow with a toddler and baby was already six weeks into grieving the sudden loss of her husband.
Four months later the farm saw the beginning of a new family; two families blending together, desiring to write another story.
Five years later, the joyous arrival of a sixth child, wove us together in fresh and healing ways.
The farm was eventually sold many years later and over time our blended family has changed and grown giving each of us opportunities to write our own unique stories.
Today also marked nine months since Mom died. It has been days and weeks and months of grief work and the ensuing adjusting to how our family looks now. I still don't know how it all looks. This full circle of time began to encircle me.
The three of us journeyed here today desiring to salvage some of our "days gone by" and recreate tangible memories for the future. The landscape is entirely different. The house, barn, garage and property have not been cared for far too long, leaving it in a saddened run-down state. But we knew this and were prepared. And so with crowbars and hammers, a drill and muscles, we came away with some of that which framed our growing up years. There were two workhorses in the group and I was NOT one of them!! haha
I'm not sure that we spoke a formal farewell. It felt natural to drive down the lane way with our treasures and a heap of reminiscing that accompanied their gathering. The days of our beloved farm are part of the present only in our reflecting. The physical place that was our rural home for 20 plus years is not how we left it. What we do have left are millions of moments which have marked us and shaped is into the people we are today. The farm will forever be a part of who I am.
