Home is where the heart is.
Clearing up the old place after living there for 38 years was a mammoth and momentous task. Years of ‘collecting’. Not as a hoarder, you understand; just from years of being. Years of accumulation is what happens, naturally. Aided by the remainder of things left behind by the children, by collections of children’s books and games that were eventually disbursed for the sake of the grandchildren, and by those who flew the nest to faraway places and who therefore could not carry their all on their backs.
Some have suggested that all of this could have been resolved had we moved more often. A truism, no doubt. But why would we have moved? We loved living there.
Built in the 1970s as one of the last subdivisions of the landholdings in Klemzig that reached back to settlement and the immigration of Prussian religious refugees, whose names read as an early ‘who’s who’ of colonial life. Names that still have resonance today.
‘Marty G’, as it became known to our clan, was originally a modest three-bedroom double brick home. Added to by the second owner and again by my hand as our family grew and swelled to number seven children.
Of course, my contribution was more than simply in the building. That almost goes without saying, I suppose. But the deepest and most lasting contribution to what turned ‘Marty G’ into a home was Anne.
We were both builders, but Anne was also the architect at the heart; who, by her craft, cunning, and deep and sometimes fierce motherly love, built a family.
And here I was, the last to leave. Joseph had moved out just a few weeks before to make his way in the world by his own lights. Like his siblings, he carries with him all that he knew here; all that formed him and helped him grow.
Anne had passed to her eternal reward three and a half years earlier. Yet in every corner, in every drawer and cupboard, she was still there. Even so, the reality was that I now found myself living alone for the first time in my entire life.
After eight months of painting and updating (from years of neglect) ‘Marty G’ went under the hammer and was sold the same weekend as I found a retreat in the Adelaide Hills that suits me down to the ground.
The six weeks between the sale and the move are now just a blur. Packing, cleaning, packing, cleaning, then repeat. Followed by loading and unloading trailer loads of boxes. Again, on repeat.
Nothing says exhaustion like heading to bed at 8.00pm, leaving a half-drank glass of whiskey. I must have been beyond tired to commit such sacrilege!
Hardly surprising, then, after six weeks of a more or less daily grind, combined with the inevitable high tide of memories, my emotions were very close to the surface. The kids were feeling it too. They found their own ways of expressing how significant ‘Marty G’ was in their lives and, of course, the memory of their wonderful mother.
In a very real sense, we were/are all grieving. A ‘double loss’ is you will. Overlapping and interleaved.
Kübler-Ross’ description of the five stages of grief was made more helpful, in my opinion, by the later inclusion of an additional two stages. Whilst not everyone experiences every stage and while, for many, there may be nothing linear about the process, I found the description of the last two stages reflecting accurately the experience I have described here.
- Reconstruction and working through: You can begin to put pieces of your life back together and move forward.
- Acceptance and hope: This is a very gradual acceptance of the new way of life and a feeling of possibility for the future
This is true both for my grief at the loss of Anne and the sale of our home. A metaphor, one for the other (with the distinction that a sale and purchase of property is always linear).
And so, here I am! ‘Starting a new life, ’ people have said as a sort of ‘best wishes for the future’ sentiment.
Yes, ‘new’ in the sense that change can renew hope, but only as the scaffold rises because it is built on what was already there; reliant upon and shaped by experience.
More than that, to ‘start a new life’ is also a tribute; an honouring of a shared life and, ultimately, of a wonderful wife, woman and partner in our family.
Thank you, Marty G! Thank you, Anne!
Paul Russell: Musings 