Home Maintenance

I had thought that the house would feel empty and forlorn, but it does not.

I know the art of entertaining, you see. I have been learning it for five years, now.

But now, the hosts have gone, bowing out one by one, and what are left are some items to be inventoried, and evanescence. If I stop and sit for a while each day, in silence in their rooms, thinking of them, each beloved face, will they see me, remembering them?

At first, I just put framed photographs up everywhere, and further contained them in garlands of fairy lights in the shape of butterflies. Battery operated, to withstand the vagaries of powercuts.

When I come home from an evening out, I find these fancifully lit portraits illuminated, like modern Books of Hours. As I remove shoes and shawls and cloaks, it feels as if I am being gently welcomed.

My friend asked a priest to come and bless the house and all those who had dwelled there, and he went through from room to room, saying the words of a cumulative blessing, and went through to the gardens, and did the same.

I let my thoughts trail, and they trace a sparkling path, up the oak stairs carved with large acorns, representing resilience and endurance, and the lights in their rooms down the hall suggest that the inhabitants of these rooms might still be amongst us, or I amongst them. I was the youngest, you see.

This feeling of their presence is even stronger when I play music that they loved, or watch the films my parents used to view together.

My Mother left me a list of movies she said I absolutely had to see. Old films, some from the first half of the 20th century. Those flared skirts, those intimate words, the subtle details of those stories.

The aerated vowels of those actors and actresses, emulated now by the gorgeous facsimiles of confectionery, Bridgerton and The Gilded Age, the way we want to believe everyone was. The certainty with which everyone seemed to say just what they felt. The soft brushing undercurrents of what was not said, leaving us second guessing. The living coral, left at the depths where it was still alive, not dragged up by facilitators today, petrified into lumpenness.

What is needed in these stormy seas is to be like one of those carved figures on the prow, you know, that would face outwards, challenging any storm. Withstanding. Outstanding.

Each one of these films contained a message for me, she told me in her note. It was my task to find out what that wisdom was, image by image, and construct meaning from it. Like a treasure hunt, or a paper trail, or white pebbles in a fairy tale.

So I view The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, and Yellow Rolls Royce, and Doctor Zhivago, and many starring Ingrid Bergman, and of course Roman Holiday and Somewhere In Time, and The King And I. And the house was full of movement and pictures. Starry, starry nights.

Lena Horne and Dinah Washington and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald roll out the velvet carpets of their voices.

Mourning used to mean wearing black or grey or white for a year, denuding oneself of encumbering jewels and costumery, and abstaining from merriment and from going out to crowded places. This was to protect the public from the sudden weaknesses that blow up like storms in the psyche, which compel those of us who are grieving to excuse ourselves and go home.

At Christmas, there were crackers ornamenting the festive table. And people forgot, and said, take some home for the family.

Like new lovers, understandably eager for privacy, we who grieve seek the solace of the silence. There is a sacredness in turning away from the outside world, and laying aside the masks and carapaces, and letting our softer sides show.

There are tiny shot glasses, in jewel colours. Arrayed on polished trays, they dazzle the tired eyes.

All the veterans of loss tell me that a routine helps get through the consecutive days. A rope we throw ourselves, to prevent sinking. But we can wrap our days so tightly that nothing fresh can get through, and that is unnatural. It’s important to have calendars and clocks, to measure the time passing, because there are two times in which a grieving person lives, at once. And both need to be felt, and their impact allowed to shape us.

I do not know any answers to the questions I used to contemplate so contentedly, and with such assurance, when all the seats at the table were filled.

Hello, I want to say, raising my glass in a flamboyant and generous gesture, all you beautiful people, wherever you are, all my best wishes go with you tonight. This is how I welcome thoughts that are difficult to greet, and learn to entertain them.

From other worlds, those who no longer live in this house may be aware of the lights in the rooms, through the windows, visible from outside.