July 25, 2005
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Resting Places
Helping my dear friend pack out her house this weekend (bedding and
wedding invitations and underwear and her daughter's artwork slewed all
over the floor, sweating guys heaving lovely furniture over the ornate
balustrade, swathing oak-framed mirrors in old bubble-wrap) I was
thinking a lot about beginnings and endings. My friend expected
this was the house she'd retire into, but paradoxically (whether
because she's a packrat or had some subconscious inkling of this
massive life-upheaval) she'd kept all the original boxes for her
delicate lamps and cherry-wood furniture.If asked suddenly, I might declaratively state I'm in my own last home,
here in the curve of the hills of my childhood, next door to my
parents, raising my kids in the community where I grew up. But
other times I've said just as definitively that I plan to go back overseas, travel widely once the kids leave home;
perhaps even find another farm in another country. The older you
get the fewer dreams become reality, but on the other hand the
worn and settled veneer is never quite the sum of what's beneath,
either. As anyone can tell you who's just helped dismantle a
house: there's plastic under that hardwood, or lovely silver
inside the plain cracked box, or -- as I discovered to its dismay -- a
thick-bodied silverfish wedged between the copper base and worked-glass
wings of the exquisite butterfly lamp.
Everyone does stop moving eventually, and in preparation for
that final moment many choose to put their corporeal remains in a
resting place commensurate with an afterlife of contemplative
ease. Certainly the living eye perceives some cemetaries in this
light, such as the achingly beautiful example near our recent host's
Vermont farm. Perched on a rocky outcrop above a burbling brook
on a bed of moss under old oaks and pines, it's the epitome of 'rest.'Eight hundred miles south, the dead own a less fortunate resting place: a green
swath under midsummer haze where, perhaps,
the original plot owners dreamed of lying in peace in the land they'd
come west to settle. Modern times have squeezed that pretty
acre between the Gavin Power Plant and its fellow towering chemical
producers. The air is acrid and the riverside scenery erased in
favor of
icons to the modern need for inexhaustible energy, bright disposable toys, and
bubble wrap.The exigencies of the living always overpower the memories of the
departed, but I desperately want to believe that every move is a move
toward better things; that death itself is neither 'final' or truly
'rest,' but rather an enlightenment of the narrow human mind and a
broadening of the flesh-and-blood parameter, far beyond the confines
of whatever emblem we leave to remind the living of our previous
existence.
Comments (9)
you were there to see the sweaty guys, weren't you, faith?
poolboy says the only way he'll ever "leave" this house is on a stretcher.
o_o
i've told him that can be arranged.
as for my final resting place...? i'll just borrow a line from a song by the group from my home state: dust in the wind...all we are is dust in the wind...
"the worn and settled veneer is never quite the sum of what's beheath either"
Wonderfully said. The whole piece is thought provoking and wonderfully written.
Just beautiful! Thanks for writing this lovely, thought inspiring piece. Happy Monday~
it's only fairly recently occurred to me, as i've begun the terribly confusing and arduous process of rethinking (or, more accurately, thinking) my religious beliefs, that the only afterlife ideas i've ever really had have come prepackaged by the church. i don't know what i think might happen After, and i'm only partly ashamed to admit i'm fearful enough of it that i kind of hope it's nothing but a big dirt nap after all... although i have mentioned occasionally that i hope i come back as a seagull, so i can spend eternity crapping on the heads and cars of idiots. low expectations, maybe, but fulfilling nonetheless.
thought provoking, as always....................
so beautifully put...
you always write so elegantly, Faith.
you write so well, indeed. and maybe because it is how you say everything that i find myself smiling and nodding at this.
sometimes i ask if life so bad and too stressful that we need to take an eternal rest. i would like to think (or hope?) that anywhere is as good a place to be "enlightened".
really enjoyed reading this entry in your blog. Thanks for some thought provoking images. And good wishes should you ever decide to move
I used to joke because there was this huge marble chickenesque statue in the local stonemason's lot that I wanted that for my headstone. Now, I don't think about it too much, and if I do, I wonder where I'll be when it's time to lie down.
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