Still Mine

I had been the good daughter, the quiet one, the kind one and the peacemaker all my life. I had sacrificed myself for others because I thought that was what God and my mother required. I had been well liked but often forgotten which didn’t necessarily upset me as I liked my own company. But then, one night when I was home alone, someone full of desperation and darkness descended on our house and violently took away everything from me, including my last breath. I observed my family and our home from a different place after that. I was still their quiet, kind and good daughter but I lived in the corners now. There were no secrets to me anymore.  I longed for their companionship so much that when the proverbial light beckoned me to follow to a different place, I could not oblige.  Maybe it was because I saw their grief and I felt I had to try to comfort them as they cried silently at night trying not to wake each other. I tried to whisper comfort and courage to them as they walked through the haze of sorrow in the day, but they could not hear me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep them from the haunting reminders. It was too great of a burden for them, and I could see that our home had become a graveyard. I understood that they needed to flee. I watched them pack. I watched them sell our horses, cows and chickens. I saw them sell the things they did not want to take with them. When my mother couldn’t pack up my room, her friends did it for her. My sister kept my favourite sweater she had knitted me, my father kept a picture of me and my mother kept my locket. Then, they left. I saw them looking over their shoulders now and then with teary wistful glances as the home we all loved diminished into the distance. I wished they could have seen me waving from the porch. I was bound to the bricks and mortar and unable to follow.  Despite my understanding, I felt forgotten once again.  Loneliness, abandonment and empty rooms enticed me to practice disappearing as much as I could. I became a sleeping chameleon against the walls of the empty rooms.

I would waken when people came to view the home but when they could not surmount the tragic history found in these walls, they left me abandoned once more.  Time and decay became my only companions, and I withdrew deeper and more frequently into shadows until, after a few years, I decided to inhabit a corner of my old room permanently. I moulded myself into the space, closed my eyes, and forced myself into a spectral sleep so the empty house could not torture me anymore.

I became as cold and still as the house. I could not tell you how much time passed or how deeply I had disappeared, but I do know I must have been quite dormant because I did not hear the new residents at all.  They must have walked past me multiple times as they debated the minute details of their new home, but I did not stir.  It wasn’t until a wrecking ball broke through the wall of my bedroom did I awaken with a horrible start. It took me a while to remember my circumstance. Like a slow deep wave, the memories of my old life, my tragedy, my family, my loss, my grief and my loneliness enveloped me until I thought I would drown from the harsh reality. I wished myself to disappear into the corner again. There was another crash through the wall that splintered wood and plaster. The dust made it difficult to see but I could hear the loud voices from below yelling instructions and information at each other. The shock of seeing my room being destroyed began to set in. It had been my only sanctuary I had ever known. And now, it was in ruins!

I felt myself rise as I moved to look over the newly created cliff at the end of the floor. Debris covered the once lush grass. The old wooden swing my grandfather had made had machines and wood propped up against it making it lean, and I feared it would crash to the ground. A women and man were debating over whether or not to keep the three-tiered birdhouse in the yard and I swooped down to hear their conversation closer as this was my bird feeder that was always meant to stay in this place. How dare they assume they had any right to its fate!

Another crash and I whipped around only to see more destruction. The horse barns were being knocked down! And where was the garden? Where was the pine tree that shaded the house on the southwest side? It had been planted by ancestors I never met and now it was kindling.

Who were they? How could they? Half my home was gone! I found myself moving quickly now. The kitchen? Still there but they had torn out the north cupboards and counter tops. The living room was in two pieces. One side had no roof and the other had the drywall pulled down revealing only studs and old insulation. Everything was almost unrecognisable!  In the corner stood my piano, covered in dust and debris. Something had knocked a few of the old keys off. Had they no sense of beauty? Of history? Age? Treasures? My treasures? My treasures!  The shock began to fester inside my broken heart and it soon erupted into an inferno. My home! Where was the porch? Half there now. Mother’s lilac bush? I rushed outside. Still intact, but the rest of the flower garden had been dug up and concrete covered their once colourful and fragrant beds. The picket fence I helped my father built had been fractured so their monstrous machinery could invade this place.  And then I saw that the old cotton wood trees, the old sentinels at the back of the yard that stood strong and loyal, were gone. Felled down as brutally as my life had been. The stumps that remained cried out to me, but I could do nothing.

I did not think my heart could break anymore. Everywhere I looked I died a little bit more, if that could be possible. This was no longer the home and farm I loved. It was only a butchered carcass that bled sorrow into me. I felt the squall of tears and anger swirl inside as I desperately tried to cope. The impotence I felt was overwhelming. Was there nothing I could do? My mind raced trying to solve the conundrum until, ah! Revelation! Maybe there was something I could do. Maybe my ghostly circumstance wasn’t so helpless. After all, they surely knew the history of this place. Had they not considered that something might have been left behind? It would be a pity if they didn’t believe in such things. Perhaps I could teach them otherwise. Conviction began to take root in me and a new type of fire burned. No more good girl, I vowed as I looked upon the wreckage in front of me. No more quiet or peace or rest. No more melting into the corners. This home, no matter how it looked now, was still mine.

And they would come to know it.