Back in childhood days we loved that magic phrase in the fairy tales "a year and a day." The prince was bewitched for a year and a day, the princess must wait for a year and a day, the lover must seek for and work for his beloved for a year and a day. In legal papers, both medieval and modern, we come across the same prase. And a few years ago in New Orleans we heard it in connection with burials in the above-ground vaults in the old St. Louis graveyard. Those who can't afford their own family mausoleums may rent the vaults for "a year and a day." At the end of that time the vault may be rented to someone else and the prior remains put elsewhere. It is as though "a year and a day" is enough time for a family to recover from its grief and cut the final ties with the dead.
The phrases came to mind most vividly at our house when our son's family moved into the big house where Grandmother passed away 12 months ago. It wasn't exactly planned that way, but when it came about, it seemed singularly appropriate that the move was made exactly after "a year and a day." The anniversary and the extra day were gray and disconsolate with cold dripping winter rain, but moving day was bright with brittle winter sunshine. It seemed symbolic, as though it was really time now to break away from sorrow and definitely take up a new way of life.
When the end came last winter, Grandfather came to live with us but left the old home just as it stood. He kept the oil furnace going and whenever he liked (and that was often) he would go up there and sit in the familiar chairs, look over his books and keepsakes, listen to their favorite radio programs, and remember. By fall we had gradually done some sorting and rearranging. He had given away some of the furniture to friends and relatives, sold a few things, moved some down here. When the plan developed for the son's family to move to the bigger quarters, the small house being pretty crowded for three lively boys, there was painting and papering, wiring and plumbing to be looked after. Just by chance, or would you call it fate, everything was ready for the move the very day after the "year and a day."
So the old home is gone for good. Externally the house looks the same but inside, it will be forever different. Even if the old paper and the old furniture had been left, the house would have taken on new character with a different family living there. It could never be the same And yet the change didn't just come all at once on moving day. All year the changes had been subtly growing, and even before that, it wasn't home as it used to be, for Grandmother had been ill so long, with strange nurses in attendance. It makes you realize how few changes really come suddenly and all at once. Gradually Grandfather had been growing used to the change, and so had we all.
To the young folks the move meant starting a whole new era in their lives, with their thoughts all toward the future. To my husband and me the change was not sharply disturbing, for we still have each other, in our own home. To Grandfather it was the keenest blow of all. From now on the old home will live only in his memory, and it will live not as it actually was at the end, but as a composite of all the years they spent together there, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. For the rest of us the door to the past is gently closing. For him, to whom our home is just a waiting room, that door will never entirely close until the door to reunion and a better home opens on the other side. -- Hope.
March
The month of miracles is here again, the wind
Is carrying bird cries, and the smell of loam.
It bends the frozen leaves of grass to find
A pale heroic crocus. Green has come
In little mounds of moss, and near the river
A troop of budding willows bend and quiver.
The birds now put an end to silent days,
The earth is young, familiar things are new.
Better foreswear a hundred blossoming Mays
When all this prophecy will have come true
And spend this afternoon out in the wind
Hearing the birds cry, watching willows bend.-- By Martha Keegan.