I have been unable to go back into the red house with the blue door where I lived for so long and where I raised my children. It is still too painful. The idea of “moving on” is a strange one, I think. After all, Annabelle and I made a new home that I love (in many ways even more than that red house). It’s full of openness and light and love. Michael and I are redoing his apartment so that it reflects us—more color, art from our travels, crafts our friends made, pieces of our still brief but wondrous life together (even as I write this he is in nyc installing lights and painting one wall Caribbean blue and hanging art). So haven’t I “moved on”? That phrase implies leaving the past behind, something I think we should never do. We should work on forgiveness, knowing that forgiveness sometimes takes a lifetime. We should not let regret cripple us, but we should learn from that regret to make better choices. We should embrace our failures, but not become failures. We should savor our past successes, but not rely on them forever. In other words, we should keep taking risks, fail better,build on our successes. We should keep moving, but not move on; rather, we move forward with all of these complicated emotions and life events. There is another house I can’t go into. It sits on top of a hill. It’s white with a red door. It’s been in my family since 1884. The last time I was inside was Valentine’s Day, when I raced in to grab something of my mother’s before the ambulance took her away. She was born in that house, and lived there for most of her 86 years. I grew up there, returned to it at times when I felt beaten up by life or to introduce a new love or to sit with her over endless cups of coffee to figure out next steps in this messy glorious life. If I did step inside, perhaps I would still be able these three months later to catch a whiff of cigarette smoke and the remains of meatballs frying. I could open any drawer and know what I’d find there. And it’s these memories, so sharp and raw, that keep me away. When Grace died, well meaning people told me it was imperative to clean out her room. To “move on”. But my wise grief counselor told me I should not even step in that room until I was ready, and only I would know when that was. One summer morning, over a year later, I woke up and knew I could do it. Yes, I trembled as I walked down that hall, but once inside I was grateful I had waited. On that day, I could laugh when I found carefully hidden candy wrappers from sneaked chocolates. I could inhale her smell without falling apart. I could choose what to keep and what to let go of. I hadn’t “moved on”. I’d lived well. I was still angry at medicine and God because such grief and anger shouldn’t go away in a year. Or even ten years. Or ever. It should morph and change and not destroy you. But you should never stop feeling. Good God, isn’t that why we are here? To feel everything in profound ways? Grief and anger and joy and love? I do not ever need to go in the red house again. And a wise friend told me I don’t even need to go in the white house again. “You have people who love you enough to do it for you,” she said. The idea comforted me, though I know one day I will wake up and get in my car and drive that road I’ve been driving since I was sixteen, straight past the Dunkin Donuts, left after the bridge, right up the hill, left at the garage. I will be ready to pull in the driveway and see the image of my father smiling on the back porch, my mother at the stove frying those meatballs, my brother at the kitchen table solving problems on a slide ruler, my own young self playing jacks on the kitchen floor, reading a fat book in the rocking chair, talking on the phone with girlfriends, running out the door on the arm of a boy ready to grab everything life held out to me. I’ll be able to do that not because I moved on, but because I didn’t.
