EAST ALBURY, NSW FEBRUARY 2020
Dear Kerstin, When my mum Jeanie was an old lady, she only asked for one thing: “I just want to stay in my own house. Is that so much to ask?” She stayed living alone on the farm in the house we all grew up in for a long time, but in the end she became too frail physically and mentally to look after herself and she had to leave her home of nearly 60 years. It was really sad.
After she left, the house began to fall down. The floor subsided, the roof leaked and cracks you could put your arm through opened up in the brick walls. I thought: It’s as if its missing her so much its giving up without her. Can a house have a spirit?
Yes, I think houses can have spirit – as in a kind of atmospheric and physical residue left by the lives, habits of being, of those that inhabited them. I think I sometimes over-read this spirit into the house. And admit that once the occupants have left, their belongings gone, most houses feel abandoned, a husk. And when worn, stained, especially if damaged too, then they can feel to me like a passing, a death of sorts. A gone spirit.
I knew, actually, that the foundations, without Jeanie’s constant watering of the garden, had dried out and shifted, causing the walls to crumble. But the feeling of
