My footsteps echoed down the empty hallways and, as if the very sounds themselves knew the layout of the house, crept around each doorway and into each unoccupied room of the house. A year and a half had elapsed since the unexpected passing of my father on that prior cool January day and the time since then had been occupied not only by coming to terms with his absence, but by the unavoidable task of organizing all that had been left behind. Soon, new faces and voices would occupy the hallways of a dwelling that had known only the presence of a single family since the day its construction had been completed.
So, I halted momentarily in the center of my childhood home at the completion of that arduous process as the echoes of my footsteps quickly died away. The back of the house faced west and I became aware of the last glimpses of the setting sun filtering through the panes of glass in the dining room. The final rays from the remains of the day stole their way into each room from which every item had been removed and every corner had been swept clean. The house was familiar, but empty, almost as if part of it too had died. In the midst of that familiar yet profoundly changed dwelling, I closed my eyes and allowed memory to take me to places that time, in its constant forward motion, would not allow.
As soon as my eyes closed, I was immediately surrounded by voices and memories that seemed to emanate from the very structure of the house itself. A young boy, without a concern in the world and covered with the sandy soil of South Georgia, ran the length of the house with his mother’s voice chasing him and his brother bearing the constant encouragement to wash up for supper. A mother whose teaching career she had placed on hold to invest in her family. Time in those days appeared to be in endless supply and crawled forward at a snail’s pace. Summer lasted forever and every day was Saturday.
A day full of playing among the pines and oaks always ended with a bedtime ritual including Dad’s Bible stories and a hug from my closest friend, Pooh Bear. Sleep was never sweeter and no threatening shadow ever descended upon that safe haven.
The family table, now long gone, was clear, tangible, and surrounded by a people who in only a few generations would no longer be remembered. Yet, the stories told there and the love shared would shape not only the ones who sat and listened, but also the generations to come.
The Christmas tree had always been placed at the far end of the formal living room where its radiance brightened the house from Thanksgiving through New Years. The boy would always lie on his back underneath and look up through the artificial needles of a tree that had been purchased years before he was born. The sensation had always reminded him of being surrounded by a northern pine forest with the winter breeze making a whistling sound in the tops of the trees. No matter where life would take the boy and no matter how elaborate the celebration or extravagant the decor, no place ever embodied the sensation of the holidays as did lying beneath that antique Christmas tree.
The years would continue to pass underneath the home’s protective roof which always served as a buffer from the fallen world outside its walls. The innocent years of childhood slowly eroded as the cruelty of the world became increasingly more evident. However, no matter the pain that the world inflicted, there seemed to be no limit to the wounds that home could heal. Not only was he safe within its walls, but he could also immerse himself in the solitude of the surrounding forest. He knew all of the trees and they, in their own way, seemed to know him and accepted him as he was, lanky and awkward as he might have been. They never laughed at his mistakes or his awkwardness but instead invited him to walk undisturbed beneath their branches. Each year on the night before school started, he would go outside and say goodbye to the forest and to express his gratitude for a peaceful summer before reentering the chaos of a fallen world.
Time, however, relentlessly drove forward at an ever increasing rate and the days of high school were over seemingly not long after Pooh Bear had been tucked away in the hallway closet. Packing his bags with the final items before his long journey to college, the grown up young boy looked around his room as if for the last time. Descending the staircase that he had climbed innumerable times, he hesitated halfway down, realizing with stark clarity that the person who would next ascend those stairs in a few months would be drastically changed from the fair haired little boy who had spent his childhood there. He remembered the sensation of his hand caressing the smooth wooden railing as he descended, its surface left polished and gleaming by years of use.
When I opened my eyes, the memories, sights, and sounds swiftly fled away much as shadows are chased away from the corners of a room by the appearance of light. Through the window panes I could see that the sun had descended beyond the western horizon and only a sliver of afterglow penetrated the trees behind the house. Looking to my right, I saw the staircase that had just been so vivid in my memory. With a melancholy glance, I knew that my time of departure had come, but the finality of that exit far surpassed my departure for college and, as I exited the hallway, the echoes of my footsteps once again resounded through the empty rooms.
As I pulled the outside door of the house closed behind me and double checked to make sure that I had securely locked the door, my gaze was somehow drawn to the sky above. With the sun gone, the bright blue of daytime had given way to the charcoal of night. I moved further away from the house into the front yard to gain a better vantage of the patterns of stars that I had known since childhood. However, instead of driving me back to the remembrance of childhood, a new sensation began to take its place.
I had been blessed beyond measure and certainly far more than I deserved. True, my father was gone from this earthly station and my home, a place bonded to the very core of who I was, would soon be in the hands of strangers. My parents would never have books written in their honor and their immense sacrifices were unlikely to be noticed by the more sophisticated of society. Yet, their devotion to this small family in a forgotten corner of South Georgia had, nonetheless, changed the world; at the very least the worlds of two small boys growing up within those walls.
As I observed the familiar arrangements of the shimmering lights far above my head, I was struck by the fact that these patterns, although changing at an incredibly slow pace, were the exact same forms that my ancestors had seen generations before. They seemed to remind me that, in spite of this world of constant change, there were things in this universe that remained steadfast. Almost in an audible tone, they seem to be reminding me that the same Creator who held them into place also knew the intricate details of my entire existence and had, through the blessings of this life and the healing of the wounds that I suffered, expressed a love for me that was unchanging, never grew old or exhausted, and never died.
Then, suddenly, in the dim glow of those distant points of light, everything became clear. Perhaps the aching for the peace of a past childhood, the safe haven of simpler days, or the mourning of a lost parent simply served as a benevolent reminder that we, like the stars passing through the heavens above, are merely travelers here. In spite of my intense love for the place of my birth, perhaps my father was experiencing at that very moment something that I had never truly experienced in the fullest sense of the word but had ardently longed for…home.
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