Mum

It doesn't actually get any easier does it. It doesn't play on the mind as intrusively or often as it did. But when it does, it really does. There was no escape on this day. 
I'd gone up to mum's (just over an hour away). On arrival, I just sat in the drive for a few minutes, simply looking at the front door. Of course, there was nobody inside to open it.
Inside, little had changed in the 10 months since the house became empty. It was still the same family's home as it has been for the past 55 years. The same furniture, ornaments, photographs. Photographs of mum and dad, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
But, it must change now, and today was part of that clearing process. Everything will have to go of course. All of those things will be packed away or mostly disposed of.
And what is left? It has to be more than a shell, an empty house, no longer a home. I shudder when I think of the house like that, I've never known it. I don't want to know it like that. Selfishly, I don't want to think of it as somebody else's home either. 

The picture hangs at the top of the stairs. My mum, taken probably in 1931. She moved in with her young family when she was 37 years old. I was very nearly 6. It was so exciting, a room of my own, with a wash basin no less. A magical garden for 3 boys to dream of and to get lost in, both literally and in fantasy. We played, we fought, we laughed, we cried, got sick, got drunk, fixed bikes and cars, painted, made music, celebrated, and commiserated. And the two people who made it all happen took their last breaths in that wonderful house. 

I've not looked at this picture as closely as I look now. Up close, I see the eyes of contemplation. As if seeing the future. The direction of the gaze is back into the house, overlooking all that was to come and how the home would be made and shaped. She also looks directly down to where she would spend her last few days, 90 years on. 
And now, she will see the gradual dismantling of all she helped to build, till all that is left are the bare walls, floors and emptiness.

Such is life and death.