Today I have a panic attack. I have not had one for some time. I am downtown, leaving a meeting when I feel my heart start to pound and the world begin to whirl around me. Somehow I make it to my truck and I lie on the front seat wondering if I am having a heart attack. Eventually the panic subsides and I am left with a nauseated, shaky, emptiness.
I drive home and sit in the driveway, confused. There is a for sale sign in my yard, and the beautiful rosebush to the left of the house has been chopped down. I wonder who did that; the bush stood more than six feet high. Gradually I realize this is not my house, or it isn’t anymore. I now see I have unconsciously driven to a house Colby and I lived in from the time he was nine until he was twelve. It was the house we lived in before we bought the house we (I) have now. I haven’t been by the house in over a year. Colby and I always included it in our “tour of homes” that we did every Thanksgiving weekend. We had lived in eleven houses and each year we took an afternoon and visited them all. As I look at the house I can see that it has new siding and someone has added a railing to the porch. Good. The house badly needed updating. I drive around the block and turn into the alley that runs behind the house. Colby’s tire swing is still there, but our vegetable garden has been turned into lawn.
I park in the alley and stare at Colby’s tire swing. I can almost see him there, swinging far higher than I am comfortable with, then climbing out of the tire as it swings to sit on top of it. Our dog, Sundance, is there too, running around the yard, tail wagging so fast I can barely see it. Colby is dressed as a pirate and yells “Yo, ho ho!” at the top of his lungs every time the tire swings toward the house. I am sitting in a lawn chair on the patio watching him. Our cat, Bootsie, is sitting by my feet and eying a bird that has landed on the fence. It is a wonderful memory.
All of them are gone now. Colby, Sundance, and Bootsie. I feel abandoned. Left behind. Forgotten . . . and I am overwhelmed with sadness. I finally put my truck in gear and drive home, this time to the right house. I hesitate to call this house home anymore as it feels alien in Colby’s absence. I open the door and sit carefully on a once familiar couch. The room, my living room, feels like it belongs to someone else. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on a strange couch in a foreign room and wonder what in the world I am supposed to do now.
I drive home and sit in the driveway, confused. There is a for sale sign in my yard, and the beautiful rosebush to the left of the house has been chopped down. I wonder who did that; the bush stood more than six feet high. Gradually I realize this is not my house, or it isn’t anymore. I now see I have unconsciously driven to a house Colby and I lived in from the time he was nine until he was twelve. It was the house we lived in before we bought the house we (I) have now. I haven’t been by the house in over a year. Colby and I always included it in our “tour of homes” that we did every Thanksgiving weekend. We had lived in eleven houses and each year we took an afternoon and visited them all. As I look at the house I can see that it has new siding and someone has added a railing to the porch. Good. The house badly needed updating. I drive around the block and turn into the alley that runs behind the house. Colby’s tire swing is still there, but our vegetable garden has been turned into lawn.
I park in the alley and stare at Colby’s tire swing. I can almost see him there, swinging far higher than I am comfortable with, then climbing out of the tire as it swings to sit on top of it. Our dog, Sundance, is there too, running around the yard, tail wagging so fast I can barely see it. Colby is dressed as a pirate and yells “Yo, ho ho!” at the top of his lungs every time the tire swings toward the house. I am sitting in a lawn chair on the patio watching him. Our cat, Bootsie, is sitting by my feet and eying a bird that has landed on the fence. It is a wonderful memory.
All of them are gone now. Colby, Sundance, and Bootsie. I feel abandoned. Left behind. Forgotten . . . and I am overwhelmed with sadness. I finally put my truck in gear and drive home, this time to the right house. I hesitate to call this house home anymore as it feels alien in Colby’s absence. I open the door and sit carefully on a once familiar couch. The room, my living room, feels like it belongs to someone else. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on a strange couch in a foreign room and wonder what in the world I am supposed to do now.
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