Sunday Blog 111 – 19th November 2023
Buckle up because this Sunday blog is going woo-woo (definition “dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural, or unscientific”)
I’m pretty sure my Dad would not love the real estate agent’s description of our family home as “a renovator’s delight”, but, well, it is. That the real estate agent chose not to include any indoor images would also have wounded his pride.
He is not here to see this-he passed three years ago, and he died in his bedroom just as he had wanted to. When his body was taken away, we lined up in the driveway and applauded. What an innings. More than six decades of pouring his heart and soul into this home on his kingdom, a quarter acre block. Each decade was a new project, his version of improvement. He was more of a finisher than a perfectionist, and not always in a good way. But still.
This is a liminal time between putting the family home on the market and the final day of being able to access the house. Time where we can still make a few memories.
I don’t love liminal spaces no matter how good they are for my spiritual and emotional growth. So I have been filling my ears with podcasts and content to help with this strange, joyously-sad and sadly-joyous time. An interview with poet Andrea Gibson on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast drew me in. Among many other things, Andrea talked about her Grandma’s Faye’s thimbles she inherited. She puts these on her fingers as she types up her poems, and they’re creating together. Andrea’s take on this is that “almost all art is made by the dead” and this just felt so true.
Her Grandma Faye communicated to Andrea “that the people who are living don’t know that we’re not only still with them, but we’re more with them than we were before.”
And I am going to stay woo-woo curious, allowing in these hopeful ideas about what happens when we die.
It comforts me, gives me hope. And right now, I need it all, every last speck.