When I was growing up, my family would often go to Indiana Beach for summer vacation. We had really good times there. Shortly before my parents died, they moved back to Illinois and I mentioned they should go to Indiana Beach sometime. My mother said she would never go again. She said despite all the good memories, it would make her too sad to go there.
Is there anyplace you wouldn’t go because it would make you sad to go back?
I went to college in Austin; I have since moved away. While I don’t know that it would make me sad to go back to all my college hangouts, I have no intention of doing so; the reasons I enjoyed those places are pretty much gone now, so I see no point in trying to recreate or revisit a fondness for them. I have new places now.
Some places just outlive their point in your life, I think. Why clutter up old places with memories when you can find new ones?
FTR, Mr. Levins has never once been to his elder brother’s grave since he was buried, almost ten years ago.
Memories live in strange places; where and why are up to no one but you.
There are many places I no longer go since my son died, places where we went as a family, places that were favorites of his.
There’s a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay (sorry, I can’t provide a link), whose last lines are:
“And entering with relief some quiet place where never fell his foot or shone his face,
I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’ and so stand stricken, so remembering him.”
St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield, Wisconsin. This is where my daughter (now 16) was born at 27 weeks gestation and where she spent 7 of the hardest weeks of my life in NICU. Whenever we go back to visit my husband’s family (Doe was born while we were on leave visiting them) we discuss going back there and seeing if any of the nurses who worked with us then are still there… But I can’t bring myself to do it. Those were such sad days. In fact (and I never tell my daughter this), her birthday is always a blue day for my husband and I. It’s complicated… we love her so much, of course, and are thrilled she was born… but, damn!, that was such a bad day the taint of it never really leaves us… Probably only the parents of a severe Preemie could understand.
Another place is part of the old building at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. When my daughter was a baby it was Pediatric Neurology; now that the Hospital has been renovated it’s sort of a little food court… It was in Pediatric Neurology that my daughter was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at 8 months of age. Oddly enough, we never went back to that wing again – after the diagnosis, she started going monthly to Pediatric Orthopedics instead and was only seen at Neurology once a year. By the time of her next yearly Neuorolgy appointment, it had moved to another section of the hospital. So, I was never back in that crappy little wing again until last year when I stumbled in looking for the Subway… When I realized where I was, my knees actually buckled. I sat down and just shook and cried for 5 minutes. And I am not a nervous or neurotic person – once I recognised that puke-green hall, though, a wave of dispair just washed over me… It was like reliving that funfilled day all over again. No thanks. I’ll pack my own lunch on future visits to Portsmouth…
I don’t mind those bittersweet places. They remind me that I’m alive.
But then again, I’ve not experienced any real tragedy in my life.
I had to add that, as I think my first post came off a bit holier-than-thou, if not snarky.
Thanks for the second post, skeptic_ev, the first did sound a bit snarky.
There are places that are “bittersweet” because you went there with an ex-lover, or even with a beloved pet who has died, or because you were there at a time when you were full of hopes and plans that now seem unfulfilled.
Then there are the unbearable places.
My grandmother’s house. She passed away two years ago, and I just can’t bring myself to go inside anymore. Every time I open the door, I expect to hear the TV going downstairs and the smell of something cooking. Its just too terrible to bear when I realize the place is truly empty.
I’m a little iffy about going back to the town where I went to college, because good Lord was I ever a shitty excuse for a person when I was at college. It’s not that I fear that there’d be perople around still a-bayin’ for my blood nearly 10 years after being a student. It’s that I don’t want to be reminded of my bad habits and the people that I hurt, screwed over, pissed off or just plain annoyed.
I apologize for the hijack, here, I hope I don’t offend. To me this story fits here … if I’m mistaken, again I apologize.
My sweetheart (and wife) passed away about 5 1/2 years ago, about 3 1/2 years before this event. I thought I’d never go to Kauai again, since of all the places we’d been, she loved Kauai most. I take it back, I thought I’d only go to Kauai once, to scatter some of her ashes there.
Along came a speaking opportunity to go, and there I was, in the place we’d loved together, more than anyother.
A good friend was in the group so she volunteered to drive me up to our favorite ‘look out’ site, above the top of the canyon, just so I wouldn’t have to be driving under the influence … of grief.
We got there, and I took some photos, and took out the tiny container of ash, and scattered them, together with the blooms from several orchid plants I bought, to keep.
It was an amazing moment. For those who believe in coicidence, this was a doozey! For those who, like me, believe in life before, during and after bodies … it was confirmation.
Though this is a VERY fairly popular tourist location, there were 6 people there, total. My friend and I, and two couples. The male-male couple was Obviously recognizing my (silent) sobs and I could feel their intensity, as they stayed there for just as long as we did. Speaking almost nothing. The other couple, she was reading aloud, … “And sometimes as you shed your illusions
And circumstances force ou to let go of past relationships, false identities or roles you have played
You face the cold desolation fo mourning what you have lost … without yet knowing what you will gain
Knos that new seeds are breakign through old ground even as you doubt …”* and on from the same book …
Once it sank in what the words were that she was reading … I started to listen and (yup, really happened … not made up or exagerated) right about then my friend said, quietly, “Look up and around you!”
The lookout overlooks a valley going down westerly into the sea. We’d gotten there late in the day, so the sun was moving toward sunset. There had been small rainbows visible down in the valley, over a couple of waterfalls … but suddenly, the sun had caught the moisture in the air just right … there was a full rainbow , not just an arc, but about 270 degrees, just short of a full circle!!! rainbow … that, from where the other 5 people stood … surrounded me. Even from where I stood it looked to be straight above me and then down and around in the circle. Lasted for minutes with all of them looking at the rainbow and looking at me, except the reader, who kept reading, … “Keep the streams of light and discard teh shadows … for they will vanish as light floods through them …” Her partner was so involved, he didn’t even think to have her look up till after she’d finished the passage she was reading. She had time to see the rainbow, then it faded.
So, now, Anywhere my sweetiepie loved is a welcome place for me to be. I’ll never know what magical place will allow her to connect our love across the divide.
I went and spoke with the reading couple, and the other couple stayed just close enough to hear the story of what they’d witnessed. I got the title of the book, and the “coincidence” that the cover had just “jumped up” at her, in an impulsive stop in a book shop, on their way up the canyon. They hadn’t known of this lookout, but when they stopped, it just “seemed” to be a great place to read a bit from the book that had grabbed her eye.
My friend sought out the store and got me a copy.
From the book, Ano’Ano The Seed - The Mana Keepers - The Fire Lily by Kristin Zambucka Published by Green Glass Productions, Honolulu, HI
Beautiful story, Wyatt.
I had a girlfriend, about three or four years after my divorce, who also been through a traumatic divroce. When we rode around upstate, where both our ex-spouses lived, we found ourselves avoiding numerous old haunts of both of ours. One day, early in our relationship, she said,“Let’s reclaim them,” and we spent the rest of our relationship revisiting these formerly happy sites, and sharing new experiences there, and turning them back into happy places filled with good memories once again.
I’m not a particularly sunnyside-up kind of guy, but this was one of the best moves I ever made.
I don’t know. Two cities come to mind, but if anybody actually offered me a job in either one of them, I’d probably move in a heartbeat. Just don’t feel like going there casually. On the other hand, eighteen months ago I was sure I would never return to either of the countries in question, and I don’t mind the idea now; who knows how I’ll feel about it in five years, or twenty?
I love Buffalo, but I feel depressed when I go through the neighborhood I grew up in … Kensington, in the northeastern part of the city. There’s a lot of good childhood memories, great neighbors, great friends, but over the past 20 years, the area has been in decline. It used to be a middle-class, stabily integrated neighborhood, but is increasingly segregated and lower-income. My old church closed last year; it was the last non-Baptist, storefront or AME church in the neighborhood. Shoe stores, bicycle stores, hobby shops, dru stores and the like … replaced with pawn shops, check cashing places, beeper and pager stores, and so on.
I know it sounds racist, but like I said, growing up, it was integrated, safe, welcoming … one of the few Buffalo enighborhoods that wasn’t ethnically or racially segregated. Now, that’s no longer true.
I have a problem going into certain places in a couple of suburbs that are now wall-to-wall housing developments. Because I knew and loved them as open fields and woods.
I don’t ever want to go back to my old High School. I spent too many days there depressed and wanting to die - whenever I have been there since those feelings seem to resurface.
If I need to, I will, but I would never do so for any trivial reason.
My old homes in Huntsville, AL and Chattanooga TN.
Friends, family, good times & good dats–now gone. The last time I saw my old Huntsville neighborhood, I actually felt dizzy & feverish for the next 2 days.
Maybe someone can give me some help. I cannot go to the place where my son’s ashes are inurned alone. I frequently am near, because my other children live around there, and I want to go, but unless someone is with me, I just can’t.
I’ve been back to the beach he loved, where I spent every summer of my life until he died, but can’t go to the area where we had our cottage.
There are restaurants, neighborhoods, etc. that I haven’t been able to “reclaim”, and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. I now live where he never was, spend my holidays where I have never had any bad thing happen. I love to talk about him, but there are things I just can’t do.
Are there any reasons I should?
I’ve never been to my grandmother’s grave. And my mothers I’ve only been to once, aside from being there when they lowered her in the ground. And it was just an awful experience. Grandma and Mommy died within a year of each other. Granny was 89, Mom was 53.
I don’t think its very necessary to go look at a stone, that’s not where they are, ya know? So I talk to them wherever I am, I don’t need to go to the cemetary.
Another place is my church. I went to school there, and my mother taught at that school, so walking in there only makes me think of the hundreds of times we were together in there. My mother’s second marriage took place in that church, I was her maid of honor. My grandma was married in that church ages ago as well. It was her church too. Both of their funeral services were in that church, and it just makes me uncontrollably sad to be in there. I’d forced myself to go in for a few Christamases or Easters after all that, and i’d cry for a bit when I would enter. Three weeks ago my cousin was married in that church. Of course I went, but I shook and sobbed through the whole ceremony. I can never go in that church again.
Me too. 
I second the posts about overdevelopment and high school. Development is out of control “back home,” and it would be too sad to look at the way it has destroyed so much open space. High school was also a very sad, sad time for me, and whenever I’ve gone home to see my folks, getting close to there makes me nostalgic and sad at the same time, and I always think, those were four great but also terrible years for you, four years you can never get back, during what should have been a very special, magical time. I guess I feel robbed, in some ways, about those four years - ignorant townies.
That said, I try to exorcise my feelings of sadness associated with certain places in my past, but there are so many places I haven’t been to or else, I’ve been, and have great memories, that I don’t know how many times I’ll have to think about avoiding places because of the memories.