Seeing Beyond Things

I once volunteered to help two elderly and somewhat reclusive brothers from my neighborhood with the very difficult task of moving out of their childhood home, which was scheduled for demolition. I did not know them well. Recently I began to feel a desire to write about the tenderness that experience held for me. I managed to track down the brother I had worked with, side-by-side, on that cold, damp autumn day a few years ago.

When we spoke, I shared with him what I had seen behind the crumbling walls of his weary house. How I had glimpsed the rich life that could not be hidden beneath the belongings piled high in every room and stacked precariously upon every flat surface. I told him that while he remembered his life out loud as we sifted through musty boxes in narrow rooms, I had imagined the colorful family that once lived there. “Didn’t the house itself even seem to sigh lovingly while listening to him reminisce,” I offered? In response he exclaimed; “Oh! You are like that! I didn’t know you were someone who sees beyond things.”

Yes, that is exactly who I am. And so is he, it seems. Not long after our conversation, I received a very sweet letter from him. In it he offered me this simple yet profound (and perfectly quirky) advice, he said;

“In the meantime–‘keep watching.’ It expands your world. Just a few weeks ago I wrote everything I knew on a dinner napkin. But I lost it.”