Empty Rooms
Empty Rooms
Had I proceeded, eyes forward, down the stairs from my bedroom to get some breakfast, everything would have been fine.
But I glanced left.
Instead of seeing a closed bedroom door at the end of the hallway, I was confronted with the unfamiliar -- bright sunlight streaming through the French doors that lead outside from Chance’s room. Chance’s door was open.
For most of the 18 years we’ve lived here, that bedroom door has been kept closed, a sign of life going on behind it. When we first moved in and it was Chance and Chandler’s room, that door kept a curious little sister from knocking over Legos or swiping action figurines or HotWheels or otherwise interrupting the important business of big brothers. Later, we got a dog...and then another and another through the years, and that door kept them from wandering in and depositing goodies on the floor, which seemed a quite appealing location to them. As Chance became a teenager, that closed door meant an instrument was being learned or mastered, then music was being written, and then albums were being recorded and mixed. In the first week of January, 2019, that closed door meant Chance was at work on his greatest labor of love, his most agonizing creative birthing process to date – a song for his brother’s memorial service.
I remember writing in my journal shortly after Chandler died, “I don’t want to think of someday not hearing Chance play music in his room.”
Last week, Chance moved the last of his things – his music stuff -- to his new place.
I walked down the hallway toward the empty room. I told Chip, “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”
Then I saw a rectangular plastic box on the floor just outside Chance’s room, the kind I used for the kids’ keepsakes. I thought it was Chance’s.
I opened it up and began looking through the first kindergarten journal. It was Chandler’s keepsake box. I slid down the wall and sat...crying.
To my right, Chance’s empty room. Behind me, Chandler’s empty room, Chase’s before that. In front of me, Charli’s empty room. Yes, she was just on a little getaway with friends, but after COVID calms down, she will be away at college. And then, just away.
I hate empty rooms.
I love full rooms. Full of kids and their friends and their noise and their messes and their passions and their crusted dishes and their studies.
And I love being a mom. Not just any mom. The mom of Chase, Chance, Chandler, and Charli. They are my best thing.
As I sifted through all the memories in Chandler’s box, the aching bubbled up in my soul – the longing for those simple, exhausting days when I was flanked by three little boys everywhere I went.
And now....empty rooms.
A perpetual optimist, I have to believe the open door will lead to the next good thing that my very generous, loving God desires to give me. I have to believe that the empty rooms will be filled with purpose and meaning and joy that looks different but still exists as long as I have breath in my lungs.
The open doors and the empty rooms. They are reminders that life is a continual journey marked by change. And here is my comfort and strength in the midst of all of it...
God is WITH me. I will be OK.
