Five years ago I wrote about the death of our old barn. It had outlived its usefulness and was falling apart and was pulled down and buried. That barn held a lot of memories for me. Since that time, several other buildings from my younger days have met the same fate. Most of the friends, neighbors, and relatives of my parent’s generation are now gone, along with the buildings that were a part of my life.
Life and the world we live in are constantly changing. Many of those changes are subtle at first and we don’t notice. But as time goes on we begin to see physical changes as things begin to show wear and tear, and start to deteriorate. The same is true for people and buildings. There are many similarities in the aging process.
Old bodies and old buildings eventually begin to wear out. The structure isn’t as strong and firm as it once was. Things begin to sag, joints begin to creak, things break down from years of use, and the list goes on and on. I don’t like to think about it, but I’m getting closer and closer to the condition our old buildings found themselves in. Years and years of physically challenging myself have taken a toll and are catching up with me. Arthritic joints and a weakening infrastructure let me know that I’m not in the physical shape I once was. The memory storage compartments of my brain seem to be filling up and it’s becoming harder to find and retrieve information or a name I’m looking for. It’s like that old storage attic or closet in most houses that becomes so full and cluttered you can’t find anything back when you need it. I refer to it as OTMRS, Old Timer’s Memory Retrieval Syndrome. I suspect a few of you have also encountered OTMRS from time to time.
We were in Ixonia, near Milwaukee, over the weekend, celebrating our grandson’s first birthday, when another important building from my life was laid to rest. The old, two-story farmhouse that I was raised in, became just a memory. Luckily, I have no problem retrieving memories about that old house. My memory bank is full of them. The house was pushed over and buried in a large hole that had been dug next to it. We knew its days were numbered, but I had hoped to be there for its death and burial. It was like missing the funeral of a close friend.
As I stood by the hole looking at the pile of splintered lumber and twisted pieces that used to be a house, I realized that a house is just material stuff; it’s not a home. No house becomes a home until people and families occupy it and interact within that house. The people who once shared that house grew older and scattered to the four winds. Time caught up with our parents and they left us to journey to the next adventure in the great unknown. Time also caught up with the old house that was once our home. It’s also gone and buried. Now memories are all that remain.
I’ve written about many of those memories in previous columns. I wonder what Ma would say if she could see what was left of the house she once made a home out of, for all of us. The kitchen had been her castle. It was old, it wasn’t modern, but it was always clean and neat, and the smells of food were always present. I can still picture her standing in the kitchen window looking to the west as she watched the glorious sunsets we now get to observe. I wonder what she was thinking. I never bothered to ask.
I remember the cold winter nights in our bedroom on the second floor. The only heat came through the round hole in the floor, covered with a decorative iron grate. I wish I had saved that item to remind me of how lucky we are now on cold winter nights. I also remember the thick frost covering the windows and the patterns that Johnny Frost left in them.
I also wonder if our treasure map that fell between the walls in the attic, was still intact after all these years? We drew a map to show where we had buried my father’s collection of Indianhead pennies. We never found them back and my father was not a happy camper. It was not my finest hour. Even if we did have the map, I suspect the large bull thistle is long gone that we had to take ten paces to the west from.
Now the map, the windows, and the grate are among the pile of twisted lumber and fieldstone blocks that was once the house I grew up in. It holds many memories, some good, some not so good, but the good far outweigh the bad. As I stood silently and looked around, with the rain still falling, I couldn’t help but think that it was just like standing in the rain beside the open grave of a friend while the minister blessed the remains and said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The only thing missing was the minister.
I would add that my memories will continue to feel the home, even though I can no longer see the house.
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