House for Sale

 

There is a house for sale, and we are going to look at it tomorrow. Do we need another house? Perhaps yes, perhaps not.

I sat this morning as the memories of the house for sale sprang into the present. I was there often as a child. I visited my cousin. At one point in life I thought about writing her story. But every time I wanted to start, I stopped. Her mother and father were still living. I could not be honest. I could not add another burden to their sorrow. In every letter I saw the pain, and slowly it brought my aunt to repentance and reconciliation with God.

I remember fun, laughter, but also a certain tense acceptance between the lady of the house and my mother. Normally I would have stomachaches after the meals; gas pains led me to a room in solitude. We were family. Traditions were upheld, at least around the holidays.

My cousin and I were close in age, close in spirit, in play and intelligence. She was sweeter than I, but I had freedom to explore life. She was like a princess in a castle.

Why did they overprotect her? Were they afraid she would vanish from their life?

Who can blame them? They had lost two sons, both in childbirth. She survived; she was strong and vibrant. But then her teenage years came, and she had no friends. She became extremely shy and socially awkward. The world was a scary place.

We went to the same high school, and she found me as a safe island in a wild storm. We were family. We were friends. I needed her, too. Her parents could not deny her my company. I was family, and I was reluctantly accepted – despite my hippie-look and new-found Christian faith, despite my political views at the time.

Who were they? He was my mother’s youngest brother, and he married a wonderful young woman who was not to my mother’s liking. Old aristocracy played its part, and  -sad to say – my mother was a bit full of it.  My aunt’s family were migrant workers, not land owners, and her father had taken his own life. The two ladies accepted each other out of cultural courtesy. They played their parts.

My cousin, though, was caught in the conflict of identity. To please her parents, she showed solidarity with the labour-movement, but in her heart she felt closer to my side of the family. She spoke dialect at home, but standard Norwegian with me.

Both of our families were humanist in philosophy, but my parents opted for an agnostic humanism, which did leave the possibility for God’s existence, but my aunt and uncle opted for a sharp atheistic humanism, and my aunt readily called herself a heathen.

So, in the fragile and fumbling adolescence, my cousin met Jesus. She lived in spirit, body and soul in an intense relationship to God.

            And this created conflict.

One day I was visiting, and my cousin and I had a bite to eat around the kitchen table, my aunt came by –and as we talked about faith, she commented, mockingly, with a small laugh: “You can’t believe that stuff, really?”

Towards the end of the last year in high school, around exam times, my cousin had a mental collapse.

He life came to a stand still, as she was in different sort of treatments, different stay in mental hospitals. She did not use her brilliant mind; she had little training. There was no future, no hope of having her own family. At one point she had her own place. She had lovers, often married men. But they did not care for her. Medication made her like a different person than her genuine self. But without it, life was volatile and hard to handle.

After years of this status, on Friday 13, the Friday before Easter – in Norwegian called “long Friday”, she hanged herself in her room, with the bitter note to her parents that she felt much more at home with my family than she ever did in her own.

So, they lost her, after all.

And they never recovered from this grief.

I wrote letter to my aunt, and she responded. My uncle grew weak and sickly, and he died while I was abroad, and none of us were notified.

Once I visited my aunt, she brought up the time she had mocked her daughter’s faith. She needed to let me know how that had afflicted her. But she was still a heathen, she said. Years later she had called for my sister to let her know that the heathen had surrendered to the living God.

So, tomorrow I will again visit the house. It is all emptied. My aunt died some time ago. The princess prison, the grave of my cousin, may see new life – but I will certainly pray in every room I go: dedicate the house to the Lord God. He reigns.

Perhaps I may tell her story – more in detail; perhaps I will let it rest.

The house is for sale, and it houses secrets.