There Was This House

I live on a main highway that runs from Delaware to Florida.  But I’m gonna write about this one brick house that I would pass everyday taking my kids to school or going shopping.  When I was a young mom the brick house had life.  Although,  I don’t remember kids playing in the yard.  In fact, I don’t even remember seeing people out in the yard. But I know people lived there because at night there were lights on in all the rooms of the house.  Driving by that house I sometimes imagined a family living there that might be like mine.  But because there were lights on in the kitchen of that house, lights on in the living room and even the bedroom I knew a family of more than one person lived there.  

However, as time went on I noticed that the lights in that house weren’t on in some of the rooms as before.  The lights eventually were only on in the living room.  That made me very sad because I knew that there must have been a change in that house.  No longer were there lights on in each room of the house but instead only one light on in the living room.  Which to me meant that the family moved out (the kids) or a spouse had died and only one person was left in that house.  Then sooner than later, I noticed that no longer was the living room light on, it was the bedroom light and the rest of the house was dark.  How sad.   Now this lone person was no longer watching tv in their living room, but is in the bedroom, sick, maybe?  I had thoughts about this person bedridden....maybe they gave up on life.  And that made me think how my life was probably heading in that same direction.  But at the time, I was raising children; I had places to go and lots to do and loneliness was far off.

Fast forward to right now.  In my house, no longer are all the lights on in the house.  Hubby and I mostly ‘live’ in only one or two rooms and not the whole house anymore.  Our lights have gone out, too.  Our kids have moved on to their own lives.  And here I am in my house with only one or two lights on.  No longer do we use a lot of the rooms in our house.  We have limited income and so we try to keep the electric bill down but really there is no reason to be in the other rooms of the house.  How sad.  

Now that I am where I am in life, I think more and more of that house where the lights eventually were only on in the bedroom.  And how sad life can be as people get older as friends and family pass on, kids start living their own lives.  

A few years ago, development moved in to where that house was.  The house was knocked down to make way for a drug store.  Now when I got by that spot it’s even more sad as I think of that place where a family lived, but slowly fizzled out and poof was gone.  

It reminds me that life is so important; to let those you love know you love them.  We are for only a season then poof we are gone.