Dust, Part 1
Summoning inspiration
after devastation.
(An excerpt from Unbecoming)
They looked around, taking stock —
ash covered everything.
The tabletops, jars, underneath the rugs, and inside
the cabinets — covered. Places they didn’t even know
debris could go.
And as they looked around it was clear to them,
that even with a thorough sweep,
this house would never be the same.
They would have to become other people.
The people that live in this house.
And maybe one day she could accept that,
but for today, she grieved.
She grieved the dust on the tabletops.
She grieved the debris caked into the linens.
She grieved the soot that found its way into the
framed wedding photos, the spoiled food in the
pantry. She grieved the things that she loved that she would
never get back. At least in their previous forms.
She grieved her ruined life.
Even so, she found it within herself to pick-up the
fallen chairs,
straighten the wall hangings,
dust-off the windows,
restock the pantry.
She would continue in the same way tomorrow,
and the next day,
and the next.
And in due time, it would resemble a home again.
But for today, this was enough.
—
In the following days, she took inventory, cataloging what she could keep, what she would throw away, what would need repair. Through blurry eyes, the portrait of home she’d painted long before her daughter’s birth started to go out of focus, til she could no longer see it.
With a new set of muscles forming from her heart, she picked-up what she could no longer keep, and brought it to the curb.
Days went by, then weeks.
The work of repair was exhausting, but she kept at it.
There was no room for pleasure, no room for herself,
only room to do what was absolutely necessary for
survival —
to mend the bed sheets,
to replace the curtains,
to repair broken windows,
to secure leaking pipes,
to anchor collapsed floorboards,
to restore crumbling furniture,
to fix a seemingly endless list of to-do’s,
all while meeting her young child’s constant demands.
It took everything out of her — everything.
So, of course, she lost herself along the way.
But she would learn that that was the point.
Each day, as she reached the end of herself, she pulled from small, hidden reservoirs she didn’t even know she had. And when those dried-up, she found new ones, and newer ones, and newer ones. On and on it went.
But there was something particular she began to see forming from this vantage point. She saw that this slow, steady emptying was actually building her capacity for what life asked of her. It was increasing her ability to see herself for who she really was, and not who pain had painted her to be. She saw that she was capable of giving so much more than she thought she could. And she began to wonder if this total emptying was actually just making room for her to be wholly and completely filled-up by someone new. The type of someone that could live in this home.
She continued the work of scrubbing, and dusting, and painting, and repairing, and slowly she started to notice a new feeling emerging.
A deeper care went into the things that remained. More attention paid to keeping these things alive — a level of care she might not have paid, if not for tragedy.
She realized how much love she felt for what was left, how much gratitude she had toward every inch of her home, every inch of their journey. And something like life began to spark back within her, in a place that had been dark for quite some time.
It occurred to her that dust, and scars, and loss don’t prohibit a good life, but in fact, could be integrated into one. She noticed as, slowly, she became more and more comfortable being in, being with, the mess of tragedy.
She saw that all was not lost. That a canvas full of dings, and nicks, and marks, and rips, and scratches was still a canvas that could be used. Yes, the portrait of home she had painted had been destroyed. But the artist, the canvas, the brushes, and the pigment, all still remained. She had everything she needed to recreate it.
So, she picked-up her tattered canvas, her brushes, her pigments, and got to work.
Here, in the rubble, was a life still worth living.
Unbecoming: Facing the Dark to Find the Light
