on closing doors

The optimist in me says that when one door closes another opens, which is true,however there are some doors that once shut will remain so forever.

I have been thinking a lot this week about someone close who has more than her fair share of sadness in recent times.  In the midst of illness and death she has also had to see to all the practical issues that remain once someone we love is no more. Empting cupboards, sorting furniture and selling up a home.

This has made me think about a time when, as a young Mum, I was also closing up a home forever, to hand it to another family to live, love, argue and laugh in.  Houses are just bricks and mortar, a big kitchen or a tiny bathroom, a small garden, or a back yard, it doesn’t matter.  It is the people who live their lives within the walls that make a house a home.

Closing the door for the last time on the house you have grown up in is a tricky thing to do. The symbol of the keys, they are no longer yours, and the thought that very soon a whole load of strangers will be opening the door for their brand new start.

As you walk away for that final time you are followed by a thousand memories. Remembering walking the path coming home from school, of carrying shopping bags, of opening the door to see friends and family, and most of all the memory of the people who once carried you towards your home and who now are no longer here.  These are all seen in clear and present memory.

From the outside a front door is no more than an entrance to those who don’t know what went on beyond.  In my childhood home the front door step was a place as children we loved to sit, to chat and to simply be.  Once opened the wide hallway offered a glimpse of the rooms beyond, and within those rooms were the people we loved.

It seems to me that closing a door forever means that there are no more memories to be made here.  That all that was to be has been. As we walk away we take our memories with us for they are the essence of a family that made us the adults we are today and will be carried in our hearts forever.