“It was a dense, moldering night, smelling of damp old basements and times best left unstirred. All those long dark hours, grief-strewn winds wailed through the trees. Calling like tender misplaced memories. Moaning, “Vrrommm … Mrroammm …” Not just lamenting, but beckoning. I took it in as someone crying out for me to “Comme … hommme…”
But I had no home. Homes were filled with loss and I’d had enough of that. I’d squandered my childhood locked up inside, catching glimpses of life and the world only through windows and books, as my parents had waited for my heart to finish me off. Then death had taken them first. I’d spent my few adult years running away from any threat of settling down, refusing to take in any more grief, but felt it following as I’d fled.
I’d gone out into the world, intricately lacing distractions and busywork around the long-gnawing emptiness, only to find I’d merely embellished rather than hidden it. I’d buried death under deep mounds of chitchat, but still heard it rustling in there.
This troubled old cabin with its veiled history had called to me from so far away. But even here I was infested with the roving misery of spirits who could never touch their loved ones again.
Especially here. I couldn’t heal their wounds, couldn’t even pat them reassuringly; but I would not be just one more who’d turned away.
It all felt so hauntingly personal. We were all lost spirits, neighbors in need, afraid to knock, lingering just along the fuzzy edges of each other’s most intimate buried memories.
On through those long hours, my heart shredded by the winds, I stayed up; unpacking, writing by moody, tossing candlelight, or stalling out to listen in on the sorrow. Letting it soak through me, draw me into its churning, writhing bosom.
Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.” – Excerpt from “The Mourning After”.