Empty House, Empty Home.

I know a house is just a house, but sometimes my emotional side wonders if there is a soul to a house. Not like the soul of a person but more like the collection of energy or "being" left over from the people who once lived there. I was thinking melancholy thoughts about my maternal grandparents house today with the passing of the holiday season. That typical white farm house, with generation after generation of my mother's family being raised in it. Even though her memory is fading, those early Christmas mornings are etched firmly in her mind, she still gets a huge smile when she tells us about them. She had a large family including the grandparents in her earlier days. A house full of little kids, watching out the window Christmas eve, running down the stairs in the morning, big meals, the sense of being together, the simpler times of that era. ................................... However the farm was miles from a school, there was no such thing as a school bus back then so my grandfather built a house in the village where everyone could stay for the winter, soon they would live in the village permanently and my grandfather would travel back and forth to the farm by horse and eventually car. My uncle owns the place now and since he is in his eighties and never married, he spends winter at a local seniors home. ......................................... I have this image in my head, what a contrast, Christmas day seventy years ago, a loud, busy, excited household. Children playing, adults drinking tea and the house would be filled with the smells of cooking and baking. Compared to the last few years, Christmas morning, empty, mostly silent, maybe the odd sound of cracks due to the cold, maybe the sound of a mouse that got in, emptiness. I wonder if the house feels lonely, does its spirits wonder what happened, where is everyone. There was a time when no one probably could have imagined it to be empty at Christmas. There is another part of me that feels there is something obscene about a perfectly good but empty house, when there are so many people around the world living in tents or on the streets, seems off somehow. ............................................. I am not always this sad sack at this time of year, just it seems easier to write about, anyway that's it folks, the end to the Christmas season, now on to Valentine's day where I will whine about not having a boyfriend,lol.