When your person dies, certain people and things in their life take on exponential meaning. Across the street from MM, the lovely Manor I inherited from my Mom, there was a family that was very important to her. When their children were born she was just as excited as when her grand babies came to the world.
The first time after taking over the house I ran into them in the street and the mother in the family told me what my Mom meant to her. My eyes started to well up and I was fairly certain I was going to have a complete breakdown in the street. I had an out of body babbling experience and cannot for the life of me remember what I said. I was super weird. I went home and berated myself for losing it with a person I just met.
The thing is, the people that knew the people we lose become very important. They are the ones keeping our person alive. They hold puzzle pieces to our person that we do not have. So after avoiding the family like a plague (it helped that a real plague actually came) after my melt down in the street, I kept running into them and we started to get to know each other. I understand why my Mom was so enamoured with them, they are good peops.
Fast forward to today. The big house's attic on the property is filled with stuff. The things that that my Dad did not manage to sell off at an Estate Sale, more on that another time, was dumped in a disarray. One corner was filled with a dining room set, carefully made in wood, by my Grandmother's father. This set had been here since 1923. I will never use it since my joints cannot handle the lack of comfort in those old pieces. I tried, unsuccessfully, to pawn them off to my Mom’s second removed cousin to no avail so in the corner they stayed. I want to turn the attic into a movie theatre but I was stuck, the dining room set held me in its vise.
My Mom's chosen family across the street ended up buying a historical building in the village. A place I had visited countless times as a child, 500 sqm of house to furnish. Then the magic started unfolding, all the things in the attic that I could not use but also could not sell, give away to non-family or throw away got a new life. Last weekend we started go through the attic together and my Mom's heritage slowly got out of the attic, including the dining set. It looks amazing in its new environs. My new friends closed the circle for me and I am sure my Mom is tickled pink up there.
As we go through this life, doing our best, the people we leave behind are the ones that keep us alive. I cannot remember where I read, perhaps it was Joan Didion, that our ancestors remain alive for as long as we speak of them. I know that to be true. As the people who knew my Mom get fewer, we buried her best friend in September, the people who remain grow in importance. They can also empty your attic. Now I need to find old school movie theatre seats. That will be a hoot!
"And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou
powerful words, and it is not about the things, it is their meaning an purpose. Great lesson