secret keepers
March 18, 2015 § 4 Comments
We bought my husband’s childhood home, begrudgingly; overpaying at the expense of our pride. It was a decision layered with gestures of false generosity and cautious hope, like the wedding we did not want, we acquiesced to parental requests in an effort to please. Our home, our wedding, and the years of silence all payment for a peace that never came.
My husband could not live among his memories; truths that are not mine to share but read a sad tragedy, an impossible fiction of reality. He moved doors and ripped out dry wall, tore up the floors and built new walls; still the secrets reside like scars hidden in fresh coats of paint. No amount of windows or light can disperse the ghosts who haunt our joy; flesh and blood they move among new boundaries with old demons.
We build a life around these secrets, with the wisdom of a professional who guards these truths and family friends who stand witness to old harms and new, releasing us from the burden of someone else’s unhappiness. They stand witnesses to the past we do not name out of respect for those we love but cannot live with. Guardians of the past, the secret keepers who remember even as we struggle to forget.
scribblechic 
I have a friend who moved into his childhood home. Made a lot of changes but the bones are the same. I’ve always wondered how you live with the mountain of memories . . .
Kay, I think you said everything quite insightfully just now. I love the metaphor of bones as silent storytellers beneath a beautiful facade.
I don’t think I could have lived in my parents’ home as an adult. I moved out as soon as possible. Still, it was emotional when we sold it as dad was moved into a dementia care home. I have friends who have “smudged” their home by burning sage and visiting each room with the smudge stick (I don’t know what it’s called) so the smoke could cleanse it.
I think the greater prison is our thoughts, the memories we cannot so easily cleanse. (Of course, some days I would try anything – including a smudge stick.)