A Major Fix, Once In A Lifetime

I move from room to room. The ghost that I am, floating on a miasma of memories, buffeted by echoes chewing at my soul. All the spaces are empty, devoid of any spirit.

But I can remember from the first attack on my eye by a photon of fiery yellow that I would be a builder of my destiny, the master of my life, in a home, my home. I was brought swaddled into a year-old structure gleaming with hope and adventure. As I laid the first foundations of realization, I wove relationships with those near me. I began erecting walls of love and security. The walls kept me safe from the outside world and gave me the peace and time to furnish the rooms of my being. Each room is a different part of myself, holding the artifacts of my memories that create the feelings and emotions for that room. In the beginning, the rooms were empty, but each year I began to fill them with love, pain, lust, sorrow, loss, and happiness.

A house full of rooms containing a full range of emotions would be a content and full life. Each human needs the balance of conflicting emotions; good and bad, each a necessary half of a whole. The plumbing carries the fluids of my feelings; electrical conduits spark those feelings with intensity or subdue them to purr like a kitten. Taps of lust turned on and sparked to ecstasy; the faucet of rage closing and sizzling quietly to anger and then to just being annoyed. In the kitchen, I am nourished, in the bedroom, I rest. Each room sustains me, and every room changes as I mature. Some of the rooms begin to take on more responsibilities for my welfare as new urges creep into my psyche.

The base-ment of my being keeps a side of my humanness in darkness. It is always there grounding me. Everyone has a basement; it’s there for all of us. Memorabilia, cold, dank, ripe, and rotten with the hope of being forgotten are stored there. Necessary parts of ourselves, without which we would never develop a conscience. It is the quantity and quality of thoughts, memories of deeds, and feelings stored here that portray it as evil. But when any of those craven bits of matter are brought up into the light they are purified in the warmth of our goodness, of those that love and cherish us. The baser parts of me would only be known and harmful if they escaped from my basement or left my house without being hidden or shaped into useful and appropriate responses in the world.

Above all of my desires, cravings, and feelings I am gathered under the roof of my soul. Each shingle faces upward from my canopy a reminder to my baser and world-tethered self that I am also a part of those heavens. This is where I thrived as a newly minted human, in a house clothed with love from others to make it a home.

Years passed as I gained knowledge and experience to start building my own life, my own home, like the one into which I was born. But the world never gave me rest, better to say that I never gave the world any rest as I furiously gathered memories to keep me warm one day, until the day I realized that I was aging.

Those years that passed escaped my gaze, and now lived only in my mind. Struck low early from dubious escapades and naïve desires, illness found me and brought me back to my country to bind my hands in servility, to scratch out a means of survival. I struggled with a lackluster attitude until I was needed back with my aged parents who were dealing with accumulating health concerns. I gave up any belongings that I couldn’t pack into a van and drove non-stop for a day and night.

It was a bittersweet homecoming seeing the end written on the crags of my loved ones, restricted in body and action, but their eternal spirit still shining through with every blink of time. My father lasted several months living through a medically laden road scattered with shards of glass that shredded his will and cut him down to a dwindling bag of flesh. One day, the heart that gave freely, took freely his remaining moments in this world. So starts the end of my world, the first etched name on the family headstone.

My elder mother could not stay alone in our home without help, so I stayed and stayed, and stayed. Over the years the house also aged, as did I without realizing it because time was devoted to my mother’s health, mine coming second, coming last. Fixing what I could and having some repairs done with the little savings shored up over the years evaporated quickly on one fixed income. My job was my mother, and it was becoming twenty-four/seven. A true labor of love, but one that was cracking the hard shell that I erected for survival.

“We should get that awning fixed, son.”

“I’ll get to that someday.”

Picking the most urgent major repair, one year at a time as money would allow. Mother came first, her health, her happiness. Cosmetic repairs were done outside and inside our home. Like magic all seemed good, just don’t look under the dust or rust as the car chugged along year to year. Low mileage, but wear and tear, bringing it to a negative value, but still of value as long as the rusted gas line didn’t spring a leak, then it would be a write-off.

“That window is leaking a bit.”

“Yes, Mom and the plaster is cracking. I know. I’ll get to that someday.”

Those cracks in Mother’s room need a few days to fix that can’t be done while she needs that room every day. So I wait, not asking myself too deeply what I am waiting for.

The garage door required acrobatics to dangerously open and close it. I know I know, I know that it will be over $3,000 that we can’t afford right now as Mom needs more care and attention.

Even though she is a tough-as-nails veteran from WWII, time is chipping away at her granite stature day by day. Fifteen years passed under my untrained care, leaving her close to one hundred with a clear mind and wicked wit, still making sure I dressed warmly before I went out for groceries or that I put sunscreen on to avoid the skin cancer that was spreading noticeably on my nose.

Still, days passed in a numbing succession of fragility, my mind wearing down, spirit shriveling, body suffering.

Then the last ride of which I was unaware heading out the door, where sirens bled red, wailing their destination, Death impatient, being kept waiting too long, tailing us and gaining ground.

The time suffering in the hospital laid Mom so low that I could no longer reach her, or feel her touch, only my tears splashing on the headstone now mattered, my heart shredding, suddenly alone, left to face a place that was once a home, that no longer exists.

Now I go back to that empty house with a spirit, broken.

“I know, I know. I’ll fix that someday…. or not.”