Coming Home To An Empty House

                                                                              

For 25 years I have been coming home to an empty house. It is not always easy, especially in these anxious times, but it is a great deal easier than it used to be.

At some point in our lives most of us will live for a time on our own. Whatever the circumstances, the challenge remains the same: You are alone for the first time in many years, struggling with wrenching loss and loneliness.  Some of this brings you to your knees. Nonetheless here you are and it’s not going to change. This is your new life and you know that you are going to have to learn how to live it, even to live it well. Some of us adapt more easily than others, but all of us need to adapt.

       I was married, then divorced. My kids went to college and suddenly—or so it seemed—I was living alone. 

       Memories of those early years by myself remain sharp as tacks. I remember the harsh scrape of my solitary dinner fork against the plate. I remember wishbones that grew brittle and white on the windowsill, the howl of wind and thunderstorms that drove me under the covers wishing for a hand to hold.

       In the winter of that first year alone, on a bitter, blustery morning, barefoot, wearing only my bathrobe, I went out on the porch of my newly rented house to get the paper. The wind caught the front door and slammed it shut locking me out. Assaulted by wind, my feet freezing, I raced along the road to the one house I knew was inhabited. I was living, then, in a summertime place only sparsely peopled in winter. My neighbor, also in her bathrobe, let me in and gave me coffee. Her husband phoned the locksmith. Since that day I have kept a duplicate front door key hidden outside my house.

In those first few years I developed a routine for my return home from a trip. I would check my answering machine hoping for a friendly voice welcoming me home then I would “circle” the downstairs, checking it out, much in the way a dog sniffs out an area in ever decreasing circumference until the central spot seems right and the dog plops down.

Sounds bizarre? Maybe so, but here’s the point: We need to notice what makes us comfortable so that we can take care of ourselves. Whatever we do, however we create it, especially if we are on our own, we need to feel that our empty house is a comforting nest, and a sanctuary.

 Our home alone needs a welcoming interior.  For me that means softness: soft chairs, soft colors, pillows and a throw blanket on the couch. This may be the time that your favorite bright poster gets a terrific frame and center stage in the room where you hang out. Surrounding myself with family in the way that I can, I have pictures of my children and grandchildren in almost every room. For many of us music is essential, not just the radio droning on, making sound to fill silence, but music we have chosen because we love it.

What surround provides  healing and comfort for you?

Most of us understand about creating physical safety for ourselves: locks that have bolts, alarm systems that include fire alarms, outdoor sensor lights. Physical safety is easier to arrange if you live in a condominium or an apartment. Do you have a lamp that is on a timer so that you don’t have to enter a completely empty and dark house? Not only is that a good safety measure, but also it is welcoming to come home to a house that is lit.

          We need neighbors who know us and who are aware of our comings and goings. Many of us are shy about getting to know our neighbors, to say nothing of asking them to keep an eye on us. We need to just do it! When the power goes out in my neighborhood I have a neighbor who unfailingly calls to see that I am all right. He has my gratitude forever.

        Who remembers exactly when anyone, even members of our family are doing anything? I know I don’t. No longer leaving it to chance, I make sure my friend, Margaret, who is also on her own, knows when I am returning from a trip. She leaves a message on my tape welcoming me home and I do the same for her.

Over many years, my house—now a condominium--has become entirely my own, not a place that is missing someone else. It takes some time and thought to discover what makes us feel safe and comfortable, but our empty house, however large or small, should be a snug, safe harbor that welcomes us home.

                                        ***

I wrote the original of this piece in 2005--a long time ago. As I see what is happening in my age group now--so much loss!-- I think the piece is more relevant than ever.

It's So True. "When two or three are gathered together . . ."

  In the Episcopal Church, the Eucharist, the ceremony of Holy Communion, is serious business. This is the core of our worship. The priest pronounces ritual prayers, revisits the Last Supper and blesses the wine and wafers. The congregation stands and kneels at prescribed moments and then each member progresses toward the altar and kneeling there, receives the sacraments: the “body and blood of Christ” in the form of the wafer and a sip of wine from a communal cup. One can choose to dip the wafer into the cup, thereby bypassing possible germs.

The story goes that Jesus, knowing he was going to die, at his last supper, “broke” the bread and “gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Then he “took the cup of wine” . . . and said, “Drink this, all of you: This is my blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

The sacrament of the Eucharist is very formal in church. And church is dressy.

But I wonder how formal it actually was at that last supper? Jesus was hanging out with his friends for the last time. He must have been sad and a bit frightened. Surely he hoped that they would remember him and all that he had taught them. And likely, being human, he said something along the lines of whenever you get together I hope you will remember me.

It is difficult for me to imagine that the very formal words I quoted above from the Book of Common Prayer were the ones Jesus used that night among his friends. They had been through so much together: these men, his followers, who were mostly fishermen and very poor: these friends who weren’t yet really sure who this amazing man was and what was going to happen to him.

Why am I going on about this?

Because yesterday, Wednesday, I shared the wafers and the cup of wine with the warm and caring Episcopal priest from Trinity Church, the Rev. Peggy Hodgkins, and two other women at Carrollton Nursing Home. My friend, Helen, wrapped in her bathrobe, was in her wheel chair, her left leg in a blue cast closed with Velcro tabs. My other friend, Alice, wearing trousers and a sweater, was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling, and Peggy and I were seated in small, stiff-backed chairs. Together we formed a sort-of circle.

Peggy had brought her handsome and tidy communion kit and she laid out the sacred elements on the narrow rectangular, book laden table that hovered across Helen’s bed: A small silver plate with the wafers on it and a tiny silver wine cup into which she poured from small glass jug, wine, already blessed.

We bowed our heads in silence. Then Peggy said a few prayers, including prayers for healing for Helen and prayers for the well being of Alice and me. The four of us said the Lord’s Prayer together. Peggy passed the shining plate to each of us, followed by the cup. We dipped our wafers in the wine. We bowed our heads in silence again. Utter simplicity.

Suddenly I felt as if the four of us in that small bedroom were Everybody: Everyone who has ever partaken of this sacrament.   We had eased, I felt, into the God- space of timelessness. 

 For the first time I experienced the power of the Eucharist to bring joy and union, communion, if you will, in a way that I have never felt in church, with all its formality and splendor. When it was complete, the four of us just sat there quietly, beaming at each other. “Wasn’t that nice!” Helen observed, with light in her eyes and a wide smile.

It was. It was.

 I thought about the experience all the way home. That I was so profoundly moved was, I imagined, my Quaker grandmother, who loved simplicity, having her way with me from her grave. I don’t know.

I only know this: That these words from the Bible are true. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt: 18-20) We don’t have to be fancy or formal or robed—bathrobes will do nicely— we don’t have to agree about the religious details, we just have to be there in one spirit for a few dedicated moments of time in order to feel God’s presence.

I knew this, too: that I wanted to risk writing about it.

I pray that I have offended no one.

When You Just Keep Offering Love

My mother died in 1987. For weeks before, as she lay in her bed, we had been talking on the phone in the early mornings. Both of us lived on the water: she on Long Island Sound in CT and I, on Sagg Pond over looking the Atlantic Ocean in Bridgehampton, NY.

“Cecily, did you see the sun rise this morning? It was so beautiful!”

“I did, Mom, It was gorgeous. How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I am fine.”

That was always her answer even though we both knew she was not fine. Not at all.

“I’ve been reading Emanuel’s Book,” she said, “the one you sent me by Pat Rodegast and it’s wonderful. Maybe not great literature, but it makes me feel good. And I like Pat’s tapes, Sometime you’ll have to explain channeling to me. I have no idea what that is, but I like what she says and how she sounds.”

 I, the family "New Age weirdo," had taken a chance at the end of my mother's life and, trusting her ever-curious mind, had sent her books that I thought might comfort her  It thrilled me that they had done so, but the thought of explaining channeling to my mother? Yikes!

“Maybe next time I come. Don’t worry about it, Mom. It’s enough that what she says makes you feel good,”

 I visited in Southport the week before she died, and sitting on her bed with some of my favorite Buddhist books, my bible and, of course, Emanuel’s Book, we planned every bit of her memorial service together. She had asked me to lead the service and I was honored and touched to be able to do this with her and for her. We laughed; we created and we collaborated. Such a blessing for me!

Then, suddenly, she was dead. 

Doesn't death always feel sudden, even when you know that it's coming?

I wrote this poem about her in 1989.

INTEGRATION

           This morning I passed a mirror in the hall

           And caught a fleeting glimpse, that is all

               of my mother looking back at me.

           The glint of glasses, a part of her since childhood

               and now a part of me.

           Her graying hair, the curve of cheek,

           A set of lines so matching as to be

               a perfect trace of her familiar face.

           I was shocked.

           My mother is dead. Before that she was old.

           At least I always thought so.

           

           How did I, when did I take on her age?

           Was I not watching as time imprinted me

               with the pages of her life?

            She was hard to love.

            So fearful to the touch that I, yearning for a soft lap,

                 found her to be

            An armless wooden chair on which I perched uneasily.

          

            I loved her mind, her gift for words,

                  her humor and her dance.

            And still, unguarded, I had no chance

                   against her criticism.

            Her piercing points left me stung for days.

            At forty I could fix her with my gaze

                   and say, “Do you mean to hurt?”

            She never did.

             When I was finally brave enough

             I gave her softness, the stuff of love,

            Which she returned.

            An awkward ball we tossed, like children,

                    toward each other’s heart.

              Now I see her peering through my own blue eyes.

              I am startled, like a deer,

              Spooked, but I will not run.

              Instead, I welcome her within me.

               

              Be at home, my mother, you are safe with me.

              Whatever treasure you have left behind

                     I will spill over into life.