BioBooksAwardsComing NextContactBlogFun StuffHome

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Saying Goodbye

When I was up in Minnesota in April, my dad put his house on the market. This is the house I grew up in, the one my parents had lived in since before I was born. As I blogged earlier, the house was mostly empty when we arrived (although not as empty as it should have been!) and it was strange.

My dad had a very hard time with it, especially as it came closer to the day we were leaving to return to Georgia. In fact, he got pissed off in the grocery store because the clerks in the deli were too young. Emotion looking for an outlet, and since men from his generation don't show sadness or grief, it came out as anger. I had to send him off to another part of the store, apologize to the clerk, and take over buying lunch meat.

It wasn't hard to guess what was going on with him, so on the ride home, I told him that home wasn't a place, home was family and that he was living with me and we'd be together even without the house.

But it was difficult for me, too, to say goodbye to this house. It (and my parents) had always been there for me my entire life. Now it isn't.

In a way, though, it stopped being home after my mom died. When we went up in April 2016, just a few months after she passed away, the emptiness was resounding. I spent a lot of time up there crying and trying not to, but everything reminded me of her.

Now the house is sold. We closed on June 6th. It belongs to someone else. Our Realtor thought he was an investor who'd remodel the house and resell it, which makes sense because it hasn't been updated since it was built. (Although my parents did put in new windows, new insulation, new roofing, and had the entire electrical system redone.)

I'm super curious to see what this guy is going to do to the interior of the house. Part of me, I think, will be excited to see it looking new and happy again. Part of me will be sad to see all the changes because it won't be the home I remember. Of course, I could be completely wrong and feel none of these things. I'll have to wait and see.