I really must vent today.
In 1917 my grandfather bought a house and had it moved to what is now my home town. My mother and her five sisters were born there. Aunt Gertie, in fact, died in the same room in which she was born, 90 years before.
Yesterday there was nothing in its place.
We were a large, close-knit family, and I spent as much time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house as I did at home. We lived only a few blocks apart, which made for convenient baby-sitting at all times.
The house was on a big lot, so there were a chicken coop, red and black raspberries, Concord grapes and white grapes, a pear tree, catalpa tree, and hosts and hosts of flowers. Later there were lovely dogwoods and bright flowering shrubs.
All gone.
One by one everybody died until there was only Aunt Joan, whose health required that she be moved to an apartment. She needed the money, so we sold the house. And for two years it sat there empty.
A few days before yesterday it was still there, dogwoods and all. But yesterday it was gone. In fact, it was so gone, my eye couldn’t process the information: it kept telling me that the house next door–which really doesn’t look anything like it–was Grandpa’s house with some kind of shell glued on to it. We had to go back again and stop the car. Then I saw that there is now an empty space where a big chunk of my life used to be, all raw earth and bulldozers. No trace left of the dogwoods.
Gone as if it had never been. Gone as if I’d dreamed it. If I live long enough, my memories of it will grow less sharp and accurate, get muddled up with memories of other places, other things, and it really will be a place that never actually existed.
So another place of beauty is ripped out of the world, to be replaced by a parking lot, law offices, nail salon, or whatever. Almost a hundred Christmases were celebrated in that house. No more; nevermore. The Orcs come with their bulldozer and Mordor captures another little piece of our reality.
But if you don’t walk by faith, you wind up unable to walk at all. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2) We shall come to that place by and by, and He that prepared it for us shall make all things new.
Except for all that Orc-stuff.
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