Memorial
This week I got to visit the site for the house that I've been talking about here for the last few weeks. It's out in the Berkshires in a charming little town I have never been to before but heard good things about. The project site is actually very close to the town green but you'd never know it while you're there; it's 30 acres surrounded by trees on all sides and slopes down to the south in a way that opens amazing views to the nearby hills and mountains. There are 3 buildings on the site now; a caretakers house that is not in great shape, the main house, which is actively in disrepair, and the chapel seen above. We know the history of the lot goes back into the 1800s, but most of what we know is about the owners who have just sold to our client. They owned it for 30-40 years, had several kids, one of whom, a son, died in a car accident while still young. It was in his memory that they had the chapel built.
On the exterior it appears much like any barn you might find on an New England farm, and the post and beam construction on the inside does little to dissuade that. It's the presence of stained glass windows to the east, south and west and church pews facing west that let you know that this is meant to be a sacred space and not simply a place to house livestock.
It's an amazing space, extremely well crafted and detailed. It's situated within site of the main house but removed enough to allow for very different experiences to go on each place simultaneously. There is a stone patio that overlooks a circle of pines that must be a hundred feet high and that form a space that would be perfect for a wedding or other celebration of life.
I am completely struck by the idea of creating space a to mourn for a lost loved one. Going on with life after a loss is extremely challenging and one finds that the human mind needs no specific place in order to bring the tumultuous memories of those we've lost to the forefront of our minds. I'm a person without a specific faith or place of worship and the remains of many of my departed loved ones do not reside in a cemetery, mausoleum or other artifice. That's something I've been proud of in the past, but in recent years I've felt a yearning to have a place to go to "see" my deceased family members. I've never wanted them to have gravestones, but I've developed an understanding of how having a place dedicated to the purpose of thinking of someone long gone helps give focus to the process of grieving, which once begun, never ends.
Despite my career choice it's never seemed like a realistic idea to actually create a space for this purpose. To bring a structure up out of the ground so as to capture and hold a space to house the spirits of the departed for the benefit of those left behind. I'm taken by this idea and find my mind wandering to it again and again. It's something I want, but have no idea what form it should take or where it should be. Things to ponder.
In the meantime, I'm glad that we're keeping this memorial to someone long gone by a family I'll never meet. We intend to honor their purpose here.
I was raised with a religion that has cemeteries - though I no longer practice. And I can tell you where about 20 gravestones of family members who were crucial to who I am as a person are located. And on the whole, I've been there only at their funerals. I've never understood wanting to visit the place where a person is buried that only holds the memory of a sad and terrible day. I much prefer to visit a place or experience I shared happy memories with that person - the parks my Grampy loved to take us to, the record stores that smell just like my step-day, the first robin sighting in the spring thinking of my Grammy, eating steamers in a NH marsh like I did with my Uncle. Everyone grieves and memorializes in their own way. And to see such a beautiful place is a reminder that it's not about the type of place you remember a person, it's the memory itself.
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