The House by the Side of the Road

On the road to my son's former high school, and now his job, there is a large house, grey in tones,with a big bent tree in the front yard. The place is dark, silent and it feels empty. I drive by it, notice it and it never leaves me indifferent. It hurts to look at it. When I imagine people in that house, I see my father in one of his soft sweater vests, checking the mailbox. He is alone, looking like he is waiting for someone. Maybe me, maybe my mother who turned him out when he was already ill. Maybe he is thinking about my youngest sister, who hung herself when she was 35. Maybe he wonders about his other daughter, and her children. Maybe in the spirit world, he learned she died of a fast spreading cancer when she was 44, three years before he died himself of Alzheimer complications. Maybe he is looking for my son, who he knew as a small child, and who is now 21. I have no way of knowing where people's essence goes once their bodies die. I think they go and look for those they loved. In spite of my mother's valiant efforts to the contrary, I loved my father very much. She poisoned our hearts with endless deceit and lies, about him, about her own marvelous virtues as a wife and mother. The house by the side of the road is a sad looking place, but I look at it with longing, because I imagine that our family could have made that place a happy home, where there were no lies and deceitful games of betrayal and deadly bitterness. A home where the four of us children felt safe because we were, where our mother and father loved each other, instead of one hating my father, and the other being slavishly devoted to her every whim, only to be betrayed horribly. A home where my sister Ludwina never knew despair and was still alive, where my other sister was still alive and in a happy marriage with her two children. Where my brother was happy with his family, his life. But as I drive by, I see the house is ugly, dark and empty, and that my family no longer exists. Only ghosts live in that house for me now. Parents have no idea of the power they have to bring either hope and strength and happiness to their children, or tear their children apart with their determination to pull their children into their dysfunctional relationship. I was lucky. I married a very steady, solid and honest loving man, who overcame growing up with a violent alcoholic father and an emotionally twisted mother who encouraged the abuse. His strength helped me get the determination to believe in my own strength, and we are a good team, after 29 years of being together. If I have learned anything from the war that destroyed my family,it is that when people decide to have a family, with children, they better have their story and line-up straight, because whatever they bring to the relationship, good and bad, will affect the next generation 's hopes, dreams and talents. And the way their heart either breaks or smiles when they see an old house sitting by the road as they drive by it on their life's path.