After a couple of years of looking for a new house, it’s finally come to pass and the purchase was completed this week. The move was made possible by my elderly father passing on and the sale of my parents’ home – my childhood home. He was 96 years old and full of vim and vigour up to the last moment, so he led a full life right up to the end. I have to be honest and say that I did not grieve very much, if at all. Firstly, there was little time for grief as there was a lot of sorting out to do. Secondly, I had no real love for him other than a sense of duty. He was an angry man and a demanding bully. I wasn’t sorry to see him go. 

My therapist told me I should try to forgive, but I’m a long way from doing that. I read one of those self-help things on Instagram a couple of years ago that struck a chord and I kept a copy. The title was “5 Reasons why you can’t identify how you feel”. The reasons were: 1. Your feelings weren’t validated growing up; 2. You weren’t allowed to show all your feelings; 3. You were mocked for showing your feelings; 4. You had to manage your parent’s emotions; 5. You feel like you didn’t belong. There was some explanatory text for each point and once I’m settled I’ll look at each point in more detail and try to unravel what I feel. This will take a bit of digging as the emotions are rooted in the depths of childhood and much of them are deeply buried by, as I’ve now come to realise, the death of my sister. It is my father’s grief for my sister dying at so young an age that my therapist told me I had to understand and forgive.

It’s not easy because as I child I wasn’t allowed to grieve and kept apart from the funeral arrangements. I was only a bystander to my parent’s emotions. Perhaps the intention was to protect me. The good news is of course that my share of my father’s estate meant that I’ve been able to make this move. Clearing out the family home has also enabled me to start the emotional digging process. I found a framed photograph of my sister in the drawer of my father’s bedside table. It’s a lovely picture, she’s looking at the camera coyly, smiling, standing slightly askew, her fingers in her mouth. At Samhain I put it up by the door to the stairs in the living room of my cottage so that I pass by and look at it several times a day as a start to the process of letting her back in. Already I’ve begun to feel more at peace with the past.

As to the new house – well, it won’t be until the New Year that I’ll be able to move in properly. The house came up rather unexpectedly because a chain of purchase had fallen through, so it caught me rather on the hop during a busy time at work. I’ve been saying to myself ‘one thing at a time’ as I’ve navigated through all the various things that need to be done when buying a house and also shifting to being part-time. A bit of the drystone wall that surrounds the garden has fallen down. The neighbouring farmer has put a wooden pallet up against the hole to prevent sheep from getting in. That will be my first job. I’m looking forward to it. Rebuilding the wall carefully, stone by stone, fitting the natural shapes together so that they lie well against each other and take the weight evenly enabling the wall as a whole to stand true and firm. And, just to add, anyone who knows anything about Swaledale sheep will know that a wooden pallet leant up against a hole in a drystone wall is not going to keep them out of a garden. So there will be quite a bit of sheep herding going on too.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member