WHAT REMAINS
It is not necessary to see with the eyes.
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This empty room. I have been here more than two dozen times. The echoes of what remains are a haunting—
Memories carved and tangible like the etchings of our comings and goings pressed into the fir floors.
Energy [both human and Divine] circulating and unrestrained captured within these four walls.
We come. And go. Like fairy dust we sprinkle little pieces of ourselves, here…and there. Ours is an outflow, an overflow of what we’ve been given: A necessary sacrifice.
If we are mindful, we do not mistake ‘place’ as something superficial or inert, but a living, breathing extension of who we are.
The intention, at the onset, is more than making something lovely for ourselves but infusing ‘what is’ with an indelible and intangible sense of people and place well-loved.
If I am anything and proud of it, I am Steward of what has been given—
There is a wisdom in recognizing that everything is temporary.
There is prudence in agreeing that all things are meant for letting go.
I roll up the freshly cleaned woven wool rug and place it carefully in the bag.
What was mine is theirs now—
This sofa and shelf. This lamp and these pillows. Pieces painstakingly selected and cared for belong not to me but to this house.
This, the twenty-fourth time—
I am practiced, even “expert” in the leaving.
Although the assumption, it is not the number of moves, but the willingness to travel lightly that makes me so.
When we hold too tightly to what we have, we have no room for the new thing.
What new thing are you desperate for?
This walking through one last time—
The slow steps,
The tiniest details attended to.
The speaking words of life into every corner,
This is what I’m made for, what I do.
If there is beauty to leave it will be this.
A manifestation of something unnamed and otherworldly.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but I can sense it.”
If I have done my job on Earth, this is what they will say.
My homes are never really mine. They are gifts to me. And then, gifts to another.
To recognize this on the front-end of the journey makes everything sweeter somehow.
Imagine what could happen if we live as if everything done matters.
Not simply to us. But to those who come after.
When you enter a room, be mindful how you leave it. Sweetened with the fragrance of your best self.
Then, what is beautiful will not require eyes to see it,
It will be seen with the heart.
Empty rooms are never empty. They are inhabited by little pieces of ourselves.
NOTES:
On Tuesday, for the last time, we shut the door and locked it.
I don’t have to re-enter to remember what was.
At night, when it’s quiet and the cats lay flanking my sides,
I replay the sweetest moments in my head.
Sometimes, not very often, I cry.
I think the wisest three words we can offer ourselves is the truth of “It is time.”
In the end, lingering sours everything.
What are you clinging too that has long-ago stopped serving you?
What fresh start is calling?
Maybe you simply need a new mantra. Why not borrow mine:
There is no loss in letting go.