Reflective Silence - Memoir of an Abandoned Mansion

At what point does a house become a home? Is it simply when we familiarize ourselves with it? Perhaps, but we feel it's more profound than that. We like to think the answer is this - A house becomes a home when we entrust it with enough memories that it knows us as well as we know it.

However, this begs another question - After everyone leaves, and a house no longer has someone to watch over, does it cease being a home? This question is not so easily answered. Unless, of course, you've personally spent time in an old house, especially one that had known generations of families. If you have, then you know the answer - Once a house becomes a home it never forgets. Though the structure may slip away over the years, its anatomy eroding through the seasons until one day crumbing to dirt and timber, it will remember its purpose until the last wall falls.

This old manor was once a home. It still is, even caked in dust and webbing. The humidity of summer made the air within the mansion uncomfortably hot and still, and as we moved through the rooms the aroma of water-damaged wood swirled around us. A bitterness emanating from some unseen rot festering away in the walls. A terminal cancer. Patches of sunlight entered through tattered curtains and ripped plastic, illuminating not just the rooms, but decades of family photos strewn across the floors and tables in nearly every chamber of the home. The memories of the house, scattered and out of sequence like the thoughts of a failing mind. "Look at what I am" ... "at what I had.", it professes loudly through the debris. Old homes like this one, so full of relics and personal belongings, are often depicted as haunted. In truth though, it is the house, itself, which had become a ghost.

Spider webs hung and billowed from chandeliers and the corners of furniture. Tiny paw prints tracked across the dusty floors, beginnings and ending at broken window panes. Long ago, or maybe not so long ago, a family grew here. Now, these same walls fester and peel themselves apart. Purposeless. Forgotten. Spiraling toward an undeniable conclusion.

What a beautiful manor this must have been, obvious even without the adornments and photographs that surrounded us, telling their tales of holidays past, birthdays and family gatherings, children growing up and leaving, only to return with children of their own. The cycle of life through these walls was stunning, but at some point that cycle had broken, and with it so too did the house.

Now, this once-grand estate slowly disappears, just as its cherished photographs fade from their paper backings.