Heart-Aching for Things That Do Not Fade
earthly treasures, feeble memory, and the things that remain
One Sunday last April, I went, alone, to the house where I grew up. Empty for the evening. The quiet of it—the absolute only hum of the fridge and the occasional breeze through the wind chimes, given as a gift at the passing of my mother who lived there and died there in the room right beside me. I watched her leaving. I saw the moment the life left her eyes. And I could never forget it.
There is a something, a concentration of memory—joy and sorrow, mingled, grief and love and laughter that is nowhere else for me on this earth. A place can be a container for memory. Memory can be there, up on the shelf, and you remember it is there, and you see it sitting there often enough. But you take it down one day in the late slant of a golden afternoon, in the quiet place where the shadows of your childhood once played upon the walls, in a hushed and holy stillness. You are ready to look.
And you take off the lid and are rushed in upon by memory so strong that a vase of bleeding hearts, freshly cut and arranged like a concise poem, sets you standing in the kitchen, weeping. The gratitude and joy of being alive, of having lived a good life, of childhood and siblings and once not knowing the things that now weigh on the heart and mind.
A year later, I am back in this house and it is quieter than ever. My father has left it, forever. The house will be sold. Every single thing must be touched and moved and every room left empty.
Why this makes me cry while I am stirring scrambled eggs or smiling at the baby, how I can go from laughing at the kitchen table to face-in-hands sobs at the thought of this empty house is a mystery to me. It’s just a place. Just some wood and nails. A tin roof that catches the rain like music.
I’m surprised how deep the ache of losing a place can go. I didn’t expect this grief. Yes, people die. Sadly, we have established that fact by now. But losing access to the places they lived makes their deaths feel different somehow. More final. There is no place for their memories to linger. No drawers to open and be surprised by some long-forgotten remembrance of a day spent together. No closets with the faint sweet aroma of your mother’s perfume or the steadfast comfort of your father’s clean, crisp shirts and shoe shine box. A place is so much about the people who live there. Even when they are gone to the post office or the grocery store, you feel their presence in the home they made. Even when they are gone, not running errands, but actually dead and buried in the grave, the homeplace welcomes you back into the memory of their love.
Knowing this place will be someone else’s, even someone who loves it, even possibly someone who has memories of their own here and will treasure and honor it—it’s jarring and unsettling. Like a door bolted on my past, and a whole library full of memories that are being discarded.
Of course, there is my daddy’s teapot, now in my own china cabinet. The sun dial in my garden, my mother’s box of brushes and watercolors. Some physical reminders of the things we loved and shared. But these things are temporary, breakable, perishable. And my heart is aching for the things, unlike earthly treasures and feeble memory, that do not fade.
I am building my own home with my children. Our home is to them what this house is to me. The cycle will repeat itself. There is so much to lose in life. So much to mourn and grieve.
But there is an invisible line that connects me to my mother and father, to their parents and their parents before them. It connects me to every one I love and everyone who has ever loved me. It begins in the eyes of my newborn baby and goes straight on through my own, back into the eyes of my mother and father, into the eyes of dear friends and family, straight on back to my grand-parents and great-grand-parents and through a history that is made up of mostly forgotten things. This line that starts in the blue eyes of my little baby connects me to the eyes of everyone who has ever loved me and and made a way for me, to everyone I have ever loved. When I look deeply into these eyes, I see the love of God for me, his provision, his faithfulness, the answer to questions I don’t even know how to ask. I see the faith that carried my father right over the shore of this earthly life and ushered him into his eternal home. It is a home that calls and waits for me, for my children and their children and children’s children, for every generation that is to come. This line can be forgotten, but it cannot be broken. It will continue on, because it is made from the only things that will remain: faith, hope, and love. This line will draw a map of a place where we can live in this life and in the life to come. A place where moth and rust cannot destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. A place where there is no death or sorrow or pain. Where there is no grief in love. A place that is not empty, but full of life, everlasting.
And we will finally be home.
Dear friends,
Thank you for being here and for reading these letters each week. May you find beauty in this day, and a way forward in the struggles and griefs of it. And I truly hope you will find a pair of eyes to look into deeply and remember the truth that love never dies, but goes on forever.
Sending love,
Mackenzie
As a thank you to my paid subscribers, I have created The Sacred Everyday Library, a collection of resources from my Patreon and my blog over the years. I’ve split them into two categories—Journaling Resources, which includes my 6-week video journaling course and two personal journal retreats, as well as Creative Family Culture Resources, which includes a 3-week creative arts curriculum for the whole family, a printable of our Paper Doll Club coloring book (made by me and my oldest girls when they were 8 and 6), and a printable coloring and activity book, perfect for aspiring artists, doodlers, and creative minds of all ages. Thank you so much for being here, and for your support.
From the Family Archive:
Faith, Hope, Love, but the greatest of these is love…
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