Saying Goodbye.

Came back this past weekend for our final Goodbyes.  The Avett Brother's continue to play in my head over and over again..

"Tear down the house, that i grew up in...."

"  ... i'll never be the same again."

 

" Take all the things that i've collected, and burn them in a pile. "

" Bulldoze the woods that I ran through. Carry the pictures of me and you."

" I have no memory of who I once was, and I don't remember your name. "



 In times of distress, music has always been a form of comfort and a way to heal. It's funny how certain songs come along at just the right moment and really resonate with us. We seem to find them when we need them most.

  We are not defined by our stuff.  Like so many folks have said, the material things can be replaced, we can build a new house we can buy new things.  The most important thing is that we are all safe, and we are all together, we are all okay.  i know this is all true.  i also know that many of those material things were imprinted with our memories, they tell our story and they are part of our history.  We are not really mourning the stuff that we lost, we mourn the memories and the life that we had there. 

The photo above, i found blowing through the yard with many other old pictures, letters and bits of poetry i'd written in high school and college. It left me feeling extremely vulnerable and exposed seeing these pieces of my past littering the yard and being carried off by the wind.  It feels as if they were from another time, long since forgotten and yet awoken at that moment.  i was only a girl here in this picture 22, maybe 23, still struggling to find my place in the world.  Holding on to dreams, and yet so very lost. Funny, how almost 20 years later i find myself with similar feelings.  The VW bus was named Miriam, and i loved her so. Years later i brought her down to Virginia with me, but she never drove again. It was many years after that i finally said good bye to her. One look at this picture and i can still remember the smell of the seats, and the sound of the engine.

So many things change with time, but it's so hard to let go sometimes. i think that is my lesson in all of this. i hung on to everything. i refused to change, refused to let go...and now i find myself with no choice but to change, let go and move forward.   Isn't it funny how life is?

The demolition crew came and removed everything. There is nothing left now,  no pieces of the past blowing around the yard. There is nothing but a hole and the memories of our life there that are already beginning to fade.

This is where we say goodbye. This is where we let go.

 ...and this is where we begin to rebuild.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring