Goodbye to My Home (vanity)

Skooz's House | 04/18/2018 | Skooz

[Skooz]

In September 2001, I bought the lot, covered in trees and so thick with brush you couldn’t walk through it. I cleared the land myself. We built the house in 2002, moving in on Labor Day. The columns on the front porch were my ex-wife’s excellent idea.

My father died four days after we moved in and I never got to show it to him.

My oldest daughter, age 11 when we moved here, entered adolescence and then womanhood in this home. I met her nervous first dates on that porch.

When my youngest daughter was born, I carried her through that door two days later. Her first steps were in the living room; she read her first words in the kitchen. She spoke her first words, I think, in her bedroom. That’s it behind the middle dormer.

We have played, oh, about 3 million hours of board games on her carpet.

The Best Dog Ever is buried in the back yard, under a branch that somehow sprouts flowers every winter.

I’ve spent numberless hours making this house a home; laying the flooring, installing fixtures, chopping down trees, planting trees, clearing brush, building a fence, painting, painting, painting. I spent two winters crawling under it, installing insulation. My blood is in this place.

Three hurricanes have pounded that roof. I went through three chainsaws cutting down trees. In May 2009, by myself, I built a deck in the back. It’s 16‘ X 24’ and I think it’s pretty nice.

I lived almost 1/3 of my life here, longer than I have lived anywhere else. The best days and worst days of my life I spent here; from days of rapturous, transcendent blissful happiness to days of crippling, heart-wrenching, despair – these walls have seen it all.

I lived here married, lived here through a divorce, lived here as a newly liberated newly single man. Here, hope has gone full circle: The sun rose, set, took its sweet time traversing the other side of the globe, then rose again – right on time – brighter than ever.

I’ve been trying to sell this place for years. The reasons we built here (proximity to my ex-wife’s job and eldest daughter’s school) have long ago run their course. Neither live here anymore.

But, now that I’m moving, my mind is filled with reasons to miss the old place. To underscore that refrain, the most amazing wisteria explosion on earth, which covers the vacant lot next door every March, just came into full bloom yesterday. I always open the windows and let the fragrance waft through the house. There is nothing like it. Nothing.

I’ve prayed for a new house and God answered right on time. I’m grateful. But, a large part of my heart will always be within these walls, wandering the huge back yard, crawling around the attic.

It’s a high maintenance house and I lack the time to provide the attention it needs. My new home is much more practical. I suppose it’s something like going from a turbulent, passionate affair to something more stable and comfortable.

It’s time to move. I’m looking forward to it.

[Windflier]

...write it down and leave it for the next owners.

I love your mind. What a poetic idea.

[gnarledmaw]

I have the same story only it was maples and some kind of weeping things with a whole bunch of landscaping. Chopped it out, leveled it out, and put in the Walmart welfare shrubberies.

[morphing libertarian]

I am 71 and have lived in 23 different places. My childhood home was torn down.

I appreciate your memories. Not everyone has them

[Songcraft]

I see what you mean, Skooz.   (The moral of the story is, don't drop your favorite pipe into the memory-filled waters of yesterday -- or something like that!)       :-)

Your thread inspired me today to search on Google for others who lived through the heartwrenching sadness of leaving a wonderful home, and I found there were many accounts like that on the web.   While the homes and stories are all different (of course), there seems to be a touching, sorrowful point where they all intersect in a sense.   I'm going to put some links here to some of those stories I found, with the thought that similar stories might be helpful in some way (as they share how they dealt with their sadness), but if you are too sad already, just skip these links and ignore this post completely.

• "How to say Goodbye to a home full of memories"

• "Eulogizing a Home: How to Say Goodbye to a Place With Memories"

• "Leaving heart and home: when your house of memories becomes someone else's"

• "It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to a House"

• "Saying Farewell to a Home"

• "How to Remember Your Old House"

• "Struggling to say goodbye to the home that was built by love and memories"

One more link here is to one of the saddest songs I've ever heard, but it is also a song with a seed of hope and optimistic thinking in it.   (Again, if you are feeling just too sad right now, just skip over this song link too, and check out the Comey thread instead.)       :-)

Here goes:

• "The Old Home" - Hank Williams

[LostInBayport]

Thanks for the compliment. I’m one of those people who drive down a back road (or even sit in traffic) and look at some houses and properties and wonder about how many lives have been lived in them. In New England some houses have stood and been bought and sold for hundreds of years. In that sense each owner is really a caretaker until the next guy arrives. It would really be something to have a note like the one Skooz wrote, and know more about the ones who came before you than just names and dates.

I know, I’m soppy.