THE BIG GOODBYE
by Kathie Arcide
Personification occurs when something nonhuman is described with human characteristics.
Anthropomorphism refers to a nonhuman entity consciously behaving like a human.
As a single mom, I vowed to keep our old house until she died of broken plumbing or electrical systems failure.
My house heard me and fought against her own aging for over 50 years, but she knew it was time to let her go before I did.
When the terminally ill are ready to die, the work of letting go belongs to the loved ones left behind. My house gently reminds me of this daily, but with 21 days left to live in her safe arms, denial fights to occupy my every waking moment.
As of this writing, she is no longer mine. I had to sell her because my tax bill had outgrown my income. It’s ridiculously expensive to live in my Google/Amazon/Microsoft inundated city.
I’m at a turning point in my life and my task is to find a new home—for myself and for what’s left of my psychotherapy practice.
***
Since childhood, I’ve been a Memory Keeper, hoarding boxes of crayoned artwork, scrawled notes, favorite clothes, even stems, with their needles intact, from the Star Pine tree that was my secret refuge throughout childhood.
When I answered the call to become a Psychotherapist, I realized my life’s work would be helping clients sort through their own recollections. Using a “Healthy Family” metaphor as our platform, together we’d dig through their traumatic childhood events to discover, and change, any mistaken beliefs they’d formed about themselves based on early wounds.
After 53 years of practicing Group Therapy, I had another pile of treasured memories from hundreds of clients.
***
A dear friend once gave me a sweatshirt that said,
“Your NEST is not EMPTY until their SHIT is out of your basement!”
I always tried to teach through modeling healthy behavior. I believe asking for what you need is a top priority, and at this turning point in my life, I had to practice what I’d preached.
Clients left all kinds of stuff with me for safe keeping, symbolic things that anchored the therapy lessons we’d co-created in their experiential “second childhoods”.
Talk about careers where blind faith is required--teachers and therapists don’t get to know how things turn out unless their students or clients come back to tell them.
So, I asked for what I needed by scheduling several House Cooling Parties and invited my clients to “come back home” where they’d lived with me for a bit.
I needed them to get their shit out of my basement.
***
They showed up. They came to reminisce in their second childhood home, and to brag about their current lives.
“Crash” arrived first, bursting through Group Room door. He said, “Hi Mom, I’m home!”. I burst into grateful tears.
Long-time coaching clients C. and D. came. I’d officiated their wedding, and D. later became my Computer Guru. He doesn’t know even about the Corrective Parenting Therapy process, but he calls me his “second mom” anyway.
C.B. showed up, having driven for 3 hours. I’d not seen her in 22 years. We’d become very close when I attended the birth of her unexpected 5th child. At 85, she was still a gorgeous, feisty woman who survived the bombing of her small German town in WWII, and that fifth baby of her now has several babies of her own.
M. was never my client, but her birthfather was. They were reunited during his therapy with me. He’s gone now but she keeps in touch because I am one of her dad’s “mothers”. She and her husband, carrying on the adoption tradition, brought their amazing daughter for me to meet!
It was a gift to hear from several returnees “I still have your Mom Voice in my head.”
***
Everyone took souvenirs. They chose soft familiar blankets. They grabbed favorite socks from the No Shoes Allowed sock-basket. They took candles, books and music, even old cassettes with meaningful songs we’d played during their therapy.
I was so proud when someone asked for the fluffy white rug we’d sat on for our sessions—an easy yes.
And in one last high-risk exercise, I told them they could even have any artwork on the walls, with two caveats. I’d say no if I’d already promised it to someone. Or, if I’d hoped to keep it, they could tell me what the piece meant to them. Then I’d decide.
As a professional Memory Keeper, I’d saved their photos of themselves as children, and of their own babies, many whose births I attended. There were wedding pictures, some I’d officiated. I’d kept the Christmas and birthday cards they’d given me. And I had their angry letters, the ones never meant to be delivered, written to the abusive parents they’d worked hard in therapy to forgive.
They reclaimed their handwritten therapy contracts, agreements made with fellow group members for the changes in themselves they would make. And I saved the artwork they’d done to heal.
They picked through my collection of rocks and shells often used in self-discovery exercises and snatched up favorite totems from the Group Room where they’d “grown up again”.
The hardest part was returning gifts they’d given me, that I just couldn’t keep, treasures I had cherished all these years, as meaningful as grade school refrigerator art made “just for Mom”.
There were sweet reunions during these House Cooling’s, and I heard of many connections that had continued for years. Their bonds with each other were forged in battle, because the deep-trauma therapy they’d shared was like fighting wars against fierce childhood enemies.
Several I’d hoped to see again were missing, and I was disappointed until I remembered-- isn’t the goal of parenting for our kids to no longer need us?
I chose to see their absence as success.
***
Right after the last House Cooling, my house started grumbling. She clogged her toilet and sprang a leak in her water heater. And then lights throughout the basement rooms began flickering and an outlet upstairs started sparking.
Her plumbing and electrical systems are failing. She is now in Hospice care.
My house is an Organ Donor. Before the builder comes to demolish her, friends are surgically removing many parts that will be reused, transplanted into new low-cost homes. And we are taking as much of her as we can to incorporate into our new homestead; flooring, doors, windows, and a beach glass mosaic shower wall made by my son that will keep her alive in our hearts for a long time.
***
Grieving these days is excruciating! I go outside and let my tears fall onto the ground to infuse the soil with meaning for the next owners. I want their new home to be haunted, from the ground up, with the healing energy and love that happened on this land for hundreds of her previous temporary residents.
Love Ghosts! The thought is so comforting.
When people ask now what work I did for 53 years, I say, “I loved people for a living.”
And most of it, right here in this house.
KATHIE ARCIDE is a Psychotherapist, mostly retired, from 53 years of private practice. She has been writing true stories since her very first one, Fluffy the Duck, was published in her elementary school newsletter. She's been working on a book since 9-11-2001 about the ability we have as humans to choose how we look at things, a lesson from her father that came in handy during her 77 years of her life's extremes--amazing miracles and horrific tragedies. But she had not claimed the title of "Writer" until she met Story Circle Network. Now they can't get her to shut up!
