It is unavoidable for me to not miss.
I live kiddy corner across the street from 415 Ridgeland Avenue.
I drive past it multiple times a week, I go for walks and gaze up to it, I look out my windows and there it is. I cannot escape it and it is a constant reminder of what I have lost. 415 Ridgeland Avenue (for those of you who do not know) is my husband’s family’s dearly beloved home. It’s a grand 2 story/2 flat brick home covered in ivy with a strong chimney where we spent many an evening around the hearth. There is a lovely garden all around it, enclosing it in with love and a tender’s heart. You walk in the doors and old, story telling wood and windows greet you. Vast rooms with enough space for young adult men to rough house to their hearts content and growing girls to escape to when they need to be alone. The kitchen is warm and cozy with a nook for good chats. In the evenings, the etherial lights hang above your heads as you watch the sun set it’s last rays. It is a beautiful home.
But now it is inhabited by strangers, and sometimes not so nice strangers. The family I knew, I loved, I felt safe with, I felt at home with is gone from that place, disbanded and ripped apart like electric wire from its casing. And I miss it so. I do.
Yesterday, I was in the garden. And I kept finding myself looking over for dear LoAnn, looking for her in her garden across the street. For I have fond memories of us both being out there together, tilling, weeding, mulching, planting, watering and more watering. We would wave and maybe cross to the other side and chat for a while. Admire one another’s tending of the earth. But yesterday, she wasn’t there. And my little heart ached with missing.
Last week, I went for a walk in the evening to escape my own family for a bit and I chose to take a route I don’t normally. I ended up on a little street that is kind of hidden behind 415 Ridgeland and I found my eyes, like magnets, gazing up into the windows through the pathways and yards and wondering who was home. And it caught quickly in my heart the truth that the ones I was looking for aren’t there anymore. And my little heart ached with missing.
I miss the lovely glass bottles LoAnn kept on the window sills of her dining room, catching light. They aren’t there anymore; instead you see a cheap fish tank. I miss hearing the machines trimming wood in the shop Roy had in the basement and garage; for some reason, they were welcome sounds over the dogs barking in the neighborhood or the cars honking their darn horns. I miss dinners together where we lingered and lingered and lingered like we had nowhere in the world to go and no one else we wanted to be with.
I have memories of being fitted in my wedding gown in the attic with LoAnn and Michelene and all the young girls standing around watching. I remember barely making it across the street after giving birth to Audrey, climbing the stairs and landing on the couch where the women cared for me and reassured me and taught me how to breastfeed. I fondly remember a time where LoAnn specifically bought cans of whipping cream (not for dessert) but to start a raucous food fight with a bunch of Joel’s friends who were over for dinner. I loved how I could go over anytime and grab two eggs if I was all out. I loved finding LoAnn in her pj’s late in the morning and Elsbeth in the nook reading Harry Potter for the 6th time. And my little heart continues to ache with missing.
To miss is “to notice the absence or loss of something or someone”. So much I miss. Part of my grief process of losing this family, this home is to write all these little things out. To record it, to share the story of it so that I can be heard and for another to say, “Yes, Shanel, I hear you and that is a lot to miss!” I wish my missing would come to an end, but I fear, my friends, that it won’t for a very, very long time. So as I said to my dear friend this morning, “We just keep walking.” Sometimes I feel like a horse that is being kicked to walk, but I keep walking.
Grief swells like a mighty ocean today.