So often I look up and see sunlight shining into this house and lighting up my baby boy. His photo on the mantle in the other room even catches the moonlight. I'm not getting all corny over this, imagining this as "signs"or any other nonsense. I really don't know if I believe in that.
...but I do love that he's always shining so bright around here.
We talked about this the other day when the girls were over - Sheri told us how she's felt her father around her, and sees him in her youngest son (which, um, yeah - have you seen that kid?! he's a spitting image of his grandfather...).
I used to feel my dad around me; for the first couple of years after he died I could - but only ever in H's room when I stood near her crib. I would brush it off as a silly feeling of hope, but it happened often enough to get me thinking.
I haven't had that feeling with my mother..., well, except for being somewhat convinced she aligned the stars to put this house in our laps. When Finn and I would discuss future games of I Spy I told him how his Nana must have made it so he would have the view he did, from a window that met her architectural approval (which was extremely important...).
I joke with my sister that I felt her with me every time I rode my scooter when I was pregnant. Her pointy finger of disapproval jabbed me during every ride. (In my defense, mom, I think is is just as dangerous to walk in this city - recalling how often I've had my toes run over on crosswalks.)
I hoped my mother was with us when Finn died. I begged for her; Heather assured me she was there. I can't say I actually felt it. I suppose, if there's anywhere I "feel" her most it would be in this house. Here I'm able to have her things all around me - not in storage or stuffed in a corner like they were on Pearl. Every day I marvel at that damn clock - keeping time for ...maybe the first time ever, or at least since it lived in our family home ..before my father died.
This house is filled with light, even on grey days. I noticed immediately that the light shines through here the same way it did the house I grew up in - I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's all about the position of the house: on a hill, the direction the windows face, and having windows front and back giving it that see-through quality. In the afternoon, when the sun is shining through the side and back windows and I can hear CBC radio playing from the kitchen anywhere in the house, I could swear I'm five years old again. (If I start hearing the sounds of my dad talking to some geologist (Rohan?) in the kitchen and my mother's typewriter down the far hall we'll know I'm actually losing my mind...)
There was a day not long after Finn died - it was the first morning I was home alone. I don't remember if it was because everyone was out, or if everyone had left... either way, I was alone; it was morning; and I was very disoriented.
I had left my home early one morning, in labour, and suddenly (it seemed) I was here, alone, in this completely new space which wasn't my home but some other house. It wasn't that I had forgotten that I had moved, but somewhere in having and losing Finn I lost track of time and space - and place...(if that makes any sense). My things were all around, my mother's things were all around - a lot of it had been unpacked so there was familiarity all around me, but it wasn't unpacked by me (many thanks to my sister and sister-in-law for being organized get-it-done-ers) so I didn't know where anything had been put. I was lost.
I just stood there in the middle of the kitchen feeling lost, not moving, just contemplating, trying to figure out was my next move would be.
As I stood there the sun rose. It was the first sunrise I experienced (that could remember experiencing) since Finn died. I wasn't close enough to a window to actually watch it, but I could see how its light came through the house. It came in shining right on the place I found Finn losing his life, across the floor and on to me starting at my toes and slowly rising up my body to blind me and move on. Had I been locked in place in any other spot in that kitchen I would have missed the whole thing.
The photos of Finn that are hung on walls or leaning on mantles haven't moved much from where they were first put in place for his service. I haven't wanted to move them. They've been put in new frames and permanently attached, ....and every day they catch the light of the sun, the moon at night, streetlamps, and house lights in ways that beam across his precious face. He always seems to be in the light.
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