Three and a half years ago I had someone whose life meant more to me than my own. I had close to $20,000 in my checking account alone and seven cars in the driveway. In one split second he was gone and I would have given every asset I had to bring him back. Two years ago I had a sister with a healthy mind and it has cost virtually every asset to bring her back. Between my assets, her assets, and the right doctors we’ve begun to do that. I spent some time this morning walking around the remains of this once great house. The walls have a few scuff marks left from the removal of some excess furniture, the pool lies dead and still. It isn’t quite as beautiful as it was a few years ago, back when it was a home instead of a house. It lost most of that sense of home when David died; the rest of it slowly dwindled over the past two years with Mary’s illness. Now it stands just as a house; a thing to be worried over, a thing that incurs debts. Mail is opened with a sense of dread now; financially I live from month to month, much like I did when I was in my twenties. This is not the way I expected to be living in my middle age. As I sat down this afternoon to do a bit of writing I heard some noises coming from downstairs. It was the unmistakable sound of a tennis ball being thrown and bouncing across the hardwood floors. It was immediately followed by the sound of two crazed Westies in hot pursuit. Then there was a third sound, a sound I haven’t heard in this house for a long time now, Mary’s laughter as those two maniac dogs scampered and slid on the hardwoods, knocking each other out of the way to get to the coveted tennis ball. The weeks and months and years and an immense amount of money all came down to that moment, to that sound… The sound of laughter was once again filling this big, dead house.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:29:19 +0000