I am living in solitude in a creaky old house. My desk is the old kitchen door, removed when we knocked out a wall fifteen years ago and now propped up on two sawhorses. I am aware of all the people who have been born in this house, quarreled in it, loved in it, eaten in it, died in it. I catch myself wondering who will sit next by my workroom window to watch the river and the road and the line of trees on the skyline. Will my desk become a door again, or will it be firewood? My melancholy at first took me by surprise, but there is a rightness about it. For a little while, I have stopped holding awareness of my mortality at bay; I have invited it to come in and make itself at home.

Margaret Guenther, Toward Holy Ground