Sometimes I think I can just go there, and everything will be the same. That little house with the flat-topped roof or the farm south of town. I think I can just go there and see the people that cared, the people that never asked for much, but gave everything they could. Gave out of love, nothing more, nothing less.

I can go to those places, the places are still there, but those places, although special, are just places. Places in need of people to give it life.

For many years I wondered how abandoned houses found themselves in their lonely state of want. Now I know, and I wish I did not. They find themselves in such a state because life moves on, life moves out, life moves, but they cannot. They must stay and mark the spot, the spot where it began. The spot where the young ventured out, and the old stayed in. Stayed in to await the return of the young, with stories of love and loss, and love again.

For it always seems to begin and end with love. That’s what they showed us. They didn’t have to tell us, we wouldn’t have listened anyway, the young are like that, but what they showed was enough. It was enough to encourage us to move forward, forward when all we wanted to do was stop. Stop and sulk, stop and feel sorry for ourselves, stop and think the world that revolved around us had paused to wait for us to move forward again.

The world does not pause, it does not wait, it moves on…with or without us. We lived with them, they lived with us, we loved as one under that flat-topped roof and that farm south of town. So much has changed, so much time has gone by. Not that much, but enough. So it goes. It goes, but it should not go without saying, because saying is sometimes all we have left. Saying what we remember, saying what we hope to never forget. Just saying.

Things left unsaid are simply left. Left where they lay, never to be picked up by anyone who knows what they meant.

There is much I would give to stand under that flat-topped roof or to walk into that farm south of town and see it all as it once was. To see them all as they once were. But that is not to be. That has been. That is gone. That shall not be again.

Although that makes me sad, I am thankful that it happened, and thankful that I have them with me. Thankful that those memories are mine to touch when I need their touch. When this time, misses that time, I can venture among the places that are not the places they once were.

The little house with a flat-topped roof, the farm south of town, still there when they are needed. In sight, or simply in mind, they are there. We all have these places, we all need these places. Maybe they need us too?