When our family vacation has come to an end and our mismatched collection of rolling suitcases, totes, and backpacks have all been filled with dirty laundry, crumpled museum maps, and unnecessary souvenirs, it often falls to me to perform the cursory final inspection as everyone else makes their way down to the lobby or out to the car. I look under beds and shake out towels. Whereas these searches once uncovered precious stuffed animals (or significantly less precious misplaced socks), they now rarely produce anything more than a USB cable or elastic hair tie.
I stuff these found objects into my pocket and head toward the door. There I pause and while looking back into the now-empty empty room, I reflexively whisper “thank you.”
I’m not sure who this benison is directed towards. I didn’t know about Saint Julian until I started writing this essay (and besides, I’m not Catholic). I suppose I’m thanking the space itself for acting, however briefly, as our family’s home. When we arrived, its windows provided a view onto a world that was exciting and new. Its floor provided a platform upon which we acted out our dynamic roles as fathers, mothers, daughters, and sisters. Its walls enclosed a space where memories were created.
Implicit in saying thanks to the empty hotel room, I am also saying “goodbye” to it forever. Even if I were to return to visit this particular place—even if I were to book a reservation for this particular hotel—it is highly unlikely I would stay in this exact room. And so as I look into the empty hotel room, there is a tacit acknowledgment that I will never see it again. Even if the stars were to align and we were able to gather in this particular place for a second time, it would not be the same. We would all be older, and so would be at different locations in our respective lives.
My brief expression of gratitude to the space I am departing occurs just as the experience itself is transitioning from an adventure being had to a memory of something that happened—and could only have happened—once. Although empty, the room will be forever occupied by the ghosts of those who once were there.
And so I switch off the light, close the door behind me, and head off to rejoin my family.
