Still Standing

Still Standing 

There once was a home
where an empty field now stands...
now a memory.

© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved

Author note: Demolished in late 90s. But I remember it well. It sat up long drive way, surrounded by fields and a patch of woods that we would hunt with our old man. An Oak in front, and a giant proud Elm in back.

I went to see it last year, and the Trees are still there, a bit weathered, but still standing proudly as ever. There is still the barn where the current farmer has pigs and there are various equipment sitting here and there.

I crossed the covert at the end of the lane that served as our boundary for riding our bikes and walking around, drove up past where there used to be tangles of Mulberries growing in the fence line that is now gone. I parked just at the head of the drive where we used to park and got out.

The lot where the house stood covered in farm equipment, but I could still see what it looked like so many years ago when I closed my eyes.

The porch with a wooden roof, covered in a pale green tin where we sat watching the storms roll in. Where we sat and watched the rain splash down and listened to it bounce off the tin above us while my old man smoked his cigar, or had a beer, and my mother read by the light of the single exposed bulb by the door. The same porch that they watched us try to learn to ride our bikes once they showed us how it was done, and where we would run around to catch lightning bugs before bed.

It opened into the Living room where the wood stove sat well tended, providing a warmth in the chill of winter that I feel a shadow of whenever I am by an open fire. The front room where we would watch scary movies and then go outside at night to play "Grave Yard" tag; the kitchen where dad always had us well stocked with food though money was pretty tight for a good while.

From the upstairs bedrooms with the creepy attic entrance, to the downstairs storage room remodeled into a bedroom with easy access to the storm cellar...it all stands there perfectly in my mind when I close my eyes.

The rustle of the leaves in the breeze almost lullabied me into the lie that when I opened my eyes I would be transported back decades to see my mom on the porch, my siblings on their bikes, or my dad riding back from the woods on the old farmall with a load of wood in the trailer behind him.

But when I opened my eyes...I was met with the relative emptiness before me.

Now, I confess, it is my hope one day to have a property of my own to offer such memories and happiness for my own kids. One where they don't have to return to in memory, but in real time and happiness.

But as far as the farm house is concerned, perhaps it's full memory will pass with me and my siblings...but a glimpse of it has now been shown to you, and at least in that aspect the memory that once there was a happy little home in that empty lot in rural Indiana will live on with you.

And I wish you a long and happy life with that thought.