She doesn't live here any more, but you can still feel her, the combination of inertia with a vague nervousness. After her husband died she kept the house by the sea for the sake of her children; she wanted to provide them with its stability as they had none in their lives. Besides, with the vision of retirement in the city gone, she found herself adrift in choices as wide and empty as the views she spent her days staring at. Soon after her husband, her mother died, and, unable to make the necessary decisions, she moved much of the furniture from that house north to her ex-husband's house. Her children were no help; they had lives of their own. And so, although big the house by the sea, became crowded with heavy furniture which was not at all to her taste and the very weight of which overwhelmed and defeated her.
A friend recently remarked that I must love that house by the sea. "It must be full of memories," she had said.
