We have started packing up things in our house and some shelves are starting to look empty.
We have a lot of stuff and want to get a head start so that we can sort through things and give away or throw away things we don’t need anymore. It’s a necessary deconstruction so that we can reconstruct in our new house in a few months time.
The far more difficult deconstruction is the deconstruction of my mother’s apartment. We have already divided things amongst ourselves but there was no rush to actually take the things away. The idea was that my younger brother was going to take over my mother’s apartment and live there but he has decided he doesn’t want to do that after all. No one else wants the apartment / the cost of taking it either, so now we will be selling it. A realtor came to take a look yesterday and we have now taken some more things home with us after all, and added them to the boxes that are starting to pile up in our own house. In the coming weeks my mother’s apartment will be deconstructed further.
I’m happy to have inherited, among quite a few other things, the old 17th century family bible, my father’s orders of merit (Dutch and German) and a painting that was once made of my parents…
… but it’s very painful to see my parents’ lives and legacies being deconstructed and divided like that. My mother’s apartment was a shrine to the extraordinary life she and my father had built together and now everything is going. Sure, many things will be there in the houses of their children and it’s nice to see the places of honor the items are getting in my siblings’ houses but it feels off to have everything torn apart like that. And what happens when my generation goes? Even less will be left over from my parents. So, next to the grief I feel, this also raises some existential questions for me. No matter how wonderful someone was in life, what is left when they go? What is the value of a life if it is so easily deconstructed?
I guess deconstruction is necessary before there can be reconstruction. That will also be the case in our new home (we’ll get a new kitchen, new bathroom, new floor and the new inhabitants of our current home will do the same to our house) but what value does the old have if it is so easily replaced by the new? Does everything old even need to have a value? What really is the point of it all in the great scheme of things? One day the earth will be consumed / burned up by the sun, what meaning does life even have at all? Maybe there is no meaning, maybe there only is the here and now. Can I accept that?
Yeah, my mind and body are exhausted, I’m feeling quite deconstructed myself… I wonder when reconstruction will begin?
The Book of Esther 