I’m having a difficult time with preparing to demolish my summer home. Part of the issue that confounds my brain, is all the work. Physical and mental, this work is keeping me more busy than I’ve been since my schedule consisted of full time job, full time kids, and full time kids schedule, and still get dinner on the table. But behind this work is the anguish of memory and it’s impending silence. This home is a catalyst and a storehouse, for memory. I walk through the rooms and watch the stream of old pictures spill out. The sound of floors creaking under my weight give rise to images and feelings from the past, trying to sneak down the hall without anyone on the first floor knowing. Without these catalysts, surely some of my past will stay hidden. So I am mourning ( worrying) my memory.

Of course the memories are still there. I’m sure my mother, in her last years, suffering from dementia, telling me of poultry on her bed from the night before (in an assisted living facility-otherwise politically incorrectly referred to as “the home”) or non-existent infant nephews (at least I think they were non-existent), had available, through whatever processes, chemical or verbal, the total recall of her 91 years. But out of sight and out of mind, without the stimulus, I might as well be demented. Then of course everyday would be fresh and full of wonder in an ever new but same environment and meeting people for the first time you’ve known all your life.

So it will be a lot harder to recall without the visual and aural. The memories, and the structure incorporating them, require respect and reverence. You can’t have a house as a friend yet I tear up while I’m tearing it down.