"And my thoughts stop there."

I went up to the trailer-house (as Dad calls it) this morning to mow the yard and do some laundry.

The house and yard have a strange air about them - a weird combination of lived in, yet abandoned. The ghosts of memories are everywhere, yet it doesn't have the melancholy old-times-that-have-been-but-will-never-be-again feeling.

If I don't get to it on Saturdays, Dad keeps the yard mowed. But the pots on the steps are a wacky display of spring flowers and weeds. My flowerbed has out-grown it's bounds and is mostly in the yard now, instead of behind it's rock border. The mint bed has long since abandoned the nice little corner where it started out and is slowly and methodically conquering the surrounding territory.
The fruit trees are nicely pruned, and two new rose bushes have been put in the front yard, tributes to Dad's dedication.

This afternoon I went back to put the clothes in the dryer, and I went through the kitchen. Pans and glasses were sitting on the counter, rinsed of food, but needing to be washed and put away. There was dust and a dead bluebottle on the windowsill, and a tiny spiderweb. Rust stains on the metal of the sink, collected around the bases of the soap dispensers. There was dust on the cabinets.

I loaded the dishwasher and washed and dried the big pieces that wouldn't go in. I wiped off the cabinets, scrubbed the sink, and cleaned out the windowsill (when I moved the little decorative teapot to wash it, the little jumping spider fell out. I left him alone). Thankfully, someone has been remembering to water the house plants.

I don't want to leave the impression that we haven't been in the house since The Grandmother got sick. We are in-and-out all the time, especially Dad, who works in the yard and goes to his study to prepare his Sunday School lessons, but we certainly have not lived there in over a year.

Sometimes, especially when I go into my room (which is a wreck from me dropping something off or picking something up without having time to properly put things away), or see my flowerbed (which desperately needs weeding and re-working), or the empty chicken coop (some varmint got the last of our chickens over Christmas break), I really miss the way things used to be. I miss living in our own trailer-house on our own land with our own animals and trees and projects, and bike rides up to visit The Grandparents in the evenings or to help The Grandmother with little projects during the day.
But I have to be careful not to miss life at our place too much, because if we lived there now, it would mean The Grandfather was gone and didn't need us any more. And my thoughts stop there. They simply freeze up - I can't think about life without The Grandparents.

The Grandfather had a stroke last week. Life has changed again, and we are again being compelled to begin figuring out a 'new normal'. He has been dependent on us. But though he could not walk, or stand for long, or brush his teeth, or dress himself, he could stand with our support and take the few steps required to transfer from one chair to another. He could lift his arms and slide them into his shirtsleeves. He could feed himself. He could speak fairly clearly. Now, he can do none of those things.

The Lord will help us with this transition into another way of life. It's just difficult, humanly, to try to think where the new strength and wisdom will come from.