I Will Always Love You

As she walked through the rooms downstairs, she barely glanced at the covered furniture, or the paintings on the walls, or the carpet beneath her feet. They were all furnishings of someone else's past...not hers. She was trying to make a decision. She was waiting for the house to tell her what it wanted.

No answers came! So sighing with resignation, she climbed the curved staircase to the second floor and began to walk there, trying to find an answer. She ambled through her great-grandfather's austere study with its maghoney furniture and the smell of old pipe tobacco still clinging to the gleaming walls. She stepped in to admire the antique, ornate fixtures of the two bathrooms, as always admiring the claw-footed bathtubs and elaborate sink and commodes. She paused for a moment in the master bedroom, looking at the huge four-poster bed and cherrywood armoire that now both stood empty. That bed had once been a marriage bed and a birth bed to five children that were the fruit of that marriage. Now, all gone, every last one, the remaining survivor of Aunt Middy now joining the rest of her family somewhere.

Most of the family, including parents and three of the five children, had left this world together on the tragic sinking of the luxury liner, the Empress of Ireland, just off the coast of Canada in 1914. Only Miles, the oldest son and Middy, the youngest daughter had remained. Miles, staying home to run the family's lumber mill and Middy, left in the care of Nanny and Nurse because of a severe bout with rheumatic fever. Grandmother Velvet reluctant to leave her child but the booking for the long plan trip to Europe aboard the ship could not be altered. That illness had saved Middy's life!

Miles had handled it very well considering his young age of twenty three at the time. There were no funerals as the bodies had been entombed with the ship in her quick last fourteen minutes before she sank. She had been severely damaged in a collision with a Norwegian ship that had saved what survivors there were but most of the passengers had been asleep, including all classes and the ship had taken them down with her. The family had been lost! So only Miles and Middy remained. Miles became father and mother to Middy, just then eight, and she had been a vital part of his own family when he married Caroline Faber at twenty-five and they had one son, Altheia's late grandfather, Marcus. Middy had never married and remained in her family home until her death at the age of eighty-eight as it was now 1994. She was gone with the rest of them. As the only child of Marcus's only child, her mother, Elizabeth, now also deceased, Altheia had the distinction of being the sole survivor to inherit the big house. A house waiting for her to decide its future.

The last room she came to was Middy's room. The most cheerful, modern and lived-in looked room in the house. Her heart ached when she entered it. Though in Middy's last several years, the two women had lived hundreds of miles apart, Altheia and Middy had remained close. Middy had loved her as gently, quietly and deeply as she had loved Marcus and then in her turn, Elizabeth. Now, she had left Altheia a very wealthy woman with a nice fortune and the trustee of this house that Middy had so loved.

With the thought of Middy's love, Altheia felt a deepening sorrow. Middy had loved them all, she had loved her town that had known her generosity and kindness for all of her life, and she had loved this house. But who had loved Middy? Who had ever given Middy back all the love she so easily gave? True, her family loved her and the town loved her but what of love...special love? There had been a rumor of a love once in Middy's life. A young handsome man from the neighboring town who had courted and wooed Middy in the days of her beautiful, fragile youth. There had also been rumors that Middy had refused to marry him...not from lack of love but because the rheumatic fever had rendered her barren. She could have no children. Middy would never talk about it, even with Altheia but there had been the rumors.

Now, it was time to do as Middy's last letter to her had said to do. She wanted Altheia to read her diary before she made her decision what to do about the house. So this is what Altheia had come to do. To read Middy's diary. In Middy's favorite wing-back red velveteen chair lay the leather-bound diary, on the polished oak table by the chair was a supper tray left by the maid and cook, Lena, as her last duty for the old house. Now, there was nothing to stop the reading. Altheia set about her task.

In Middy's then strong, beautiful cursive writing, Altheia began to read of the year of 1928, when Middy had been twenty-two. It told the story of the rumors but it told of the truth. It told of James, the young man that Middy loved. It told of the courtship of that year. It told of the dreams of marriage and children. It told of happiness and joy. It told of the tragic news from three doctors of Middy's inability to bear children. It told of the tears and despair. It told of the sadness of refusing James' marriage proposal and his insistence that it did not matter about the children. But it mattered to Middy so she sent him away. It told of the days of heartbreak and grief as she dealt with the loss of her love and finally the acceptance of it. The diary last entry had been written five years later when she told of the arrival of James' new son after he had married two years before. Written in a sort of tragic sense of happiness, Middy's last entry told of how she was glad that she had done the right thing. James had seemed happy and in love when she had seen him last. It was a diary of love, unselfish, giving and caring love. As dawn broke, Altheia finished it and then wept for the lovely woman who had been her aunt and who had been the possessor of the most loving heart she had ever known.

Now, Altheia knew what to do with the house. She had two offers. One; a sizeable offer from a developer to buy the property and tear down the house and build an apartment complex. The second offer; for the house to be donated to the historical society and preserved as it was.

In Altheia's mind, there was only one offer. Middy's house would stand always as the house of love it was and lovingly tended to by the historical society as a museum to share with everyone! It would have been Middy's choice!

Altheia smiled as she at last had her answer!