House Cleaning that Last Room

Quotes from an old movie, recently revisited:

It's not like ---- was the only one around here you ran out on.

You can have roots and wings.

For the Trucker, short run to Wisconsin this week.  All preparations made, but the need of a friend kept his Passenger at home.  Again.  Will it always be so?  Which is God's plan for my life, serving at home, or accompanying on the road?

A few days later, serving completed, a commitment fulfilled.  The joy of caring, an experience to treasure.  Now to the neglected housework.  This museum of memories in which we live.    General cleaning and maintenance easier to avoid, than to accomplish, because of the need to face attending memories.

One room remains to thoroughly clean.

Since you left.

The big basement room, we called it, to distinguish between it and the bedroom section. Where family and friends gathered.  The place of worn sofas, cozy blankets and pillows, movies, books, games, and a welcoming pellet stove.  Empty now, and cold.  Even the echoes have gone.

It's not like ---- was the only one around here you ran out on.

No, it was more than your parents.  Your brothers.  The one who wished to share your life.  Grandparents, cousins.  Church family, friends.

Time doesn't erase the pain.  Doesn't even dull it.  Not for any of us.

Time does reduce the ability to express the pain.

Stifled, it gnaws slowly into our hearts, like rust.  No amount of sanding, or cutting, or painting over, stops the cancerous spread.

But, once again, memories must be faced.  

The grease spots on the carpet from oiling tack.

The scratches below the pegs on the wall from the snaps of your barn coat and coveralls.

The scuffs near the baseboard from the bin that held your work boots and old sneakers.

The corner where you dumped your saddles.

The scrapes on the far side of the stove, from the swivel rocker where you sat to toast your feet on cold winter evenings.

None of these can I bear to treat, to paint over, to buff out.

I think, is there still some place here, some small unseen place, where you touched, where your hand or finger print still lingers?  And might I unknowingly wipe it away with my cleaning rag?

If I could see, if I could know, I'd never, never wipe it off.  I'd set a guard around it, mark the spot, allow no one or no thing to take that last touch of you from this house, a touch that I could claim as mine.

But time marches on, requiring me to clean and tidy this room, at last.  Dust settles.  Spiders climb and spin, beetles scramble, bugs curl up and expire.  They have no respect for grief.  

And the children come to play.  They have long since stopped asking for you.  But I see their furtive glances at the photos on the wall.  At the closed door leading to the bedroom that used to be yours.  The room that held those intriguing books about horses, the delightful stuffed animals, and the "pretties."  All are gone now.  The room is occupied again, by a masculine lifestyle. Just your shelf bolted to the wall remains, now hung with hats instead of necklaces.

You can have roots and wings....it is possible.  But instead of being permitted to do so, you became a puppet, a pawn.  And your parents were robbed of the joy of opening their hands and gently launching you into a life outside these walls.  Instead, in fearful secrecy, obligated to those whose demands robbed you of serenity and security, you vanished.  Thrust into a life for which you were not prepared, for which there was no safety net.  Forced to wall off your heart, to survive.

How long can you fly alone, before finding a place to rest body, mind, and spirit?  How long can you live, without the nourishment that comes from your roots?