I heard the news on the 3rd anniversary of my grandfather’s death (today) that the school and orphanage he grew up in is going to close. This is the same orphanage I was taken to year after year as a child and told I’d live there when my mother got tired of me. I think one of the reasons I’m a bit upset about its closing is that I really liked that place. I hoped she’d leave us there.
The building will stand and have military connections but it won’t be the place he grew up in and the place I hoped to be sent. It’s as if a landmark of my life is being knocked down. This is where hope was, this is where I can sometimes go back to in my mind and think of how different it could have been had I lived there. The significance of losing an orphanage with so much of my grandfather’s history and mine feels … well it feels like his life has been erased and the hope I held never existed. I know I’ve taken the closing personally but so much took place there that I loved. To see it go really hurts.
Part of me sees myself losing the imaginary grip I had on being able to reach back into my past, change one thing and get a better outcome. I know I can’t go back and force my mother to send me there like she threatened to. I cannot force her to leave me there after each yearly visit but knowing the building is as I left it somehow soothed me. I guess I was holding on to old bricks hoping for a better home in the future.
RECENT COMMENTS