the richness is gone, the house remains

My wife is going through a bad patch at work -- feeling the pinch of yuppy-young managers who think that making employees feel fearful is the mark of leadership. The situation brings out my Islamic State desire to chop off some hands or worse....

My son is enduring a personal bad-patch upset. I can tell because his sometimes-sullen willingness to generalize about the people around him is on the back burner. His footing is not so firm. When things hurt, the bullshit of "people think" or "everyone feels" gets a new and improved perspective ... same for the young, same for the old, I think.

My own ability to meet and greet the heat of the last few days sets me back in a bad-patch arena.

As the song once observed, "my get-up-and-go has got up and went."

And so, when my stepmother let it be known on Friday that she would have liked it if I came up to a nearby hilltown community to help with the last vestiges of moving out of a house her partner owns, I just couldn't bring my sympathies to bear. The house was the scene of many family get-togethers over the years, but now it is about to be sold. Gathering there one last time would be an exercise in confused sadness: All that love and energy and effort and now, in the end, it is just a house. No, I would not go ... I was just too wrung out.

Just a house. Just a person. How does that happen? The richness dissolves, the house stands ... and ... and ... and ... do things improve or get somehow solved because there is some sad or happy recollection? I do not want to listen to heartfelt or allegedly heartfelt recollections. My own are confusing enough in that gone-baby-gone way.

"A problem shared is a problem halved." Is that so or is it just another bit of whistling past the graveyard?

The richness is gone. The house remains.

Someone will think of something wise to say. Luckily, I will not be around the hear it.