My parents only owned one house my entire life. This was home. Even after I moved out and had homes of my own, my parents' house was home. This is a different level of home.
It was tough going back to clean it out after my mom died. Lots of crying and trying to decide what to donate and what to bring to Georgia. It was even stranger to see the house empty, to look at it through new eyes and realize it needed a lot of TLC. It's funny how I didn't see that when it was filled with my parents' things.
It was tough to list it, harder to walk out of it and realize that was the last time ever.
And then more than two years after we sold it, the flipper finally listed the house for sale. Looking through the pictures of the house was harder than the final morning there. He'd gutted the house, redone everything.
The fireplaces were gone. The hardwood floors were gone and replaced with whatever he used. The stairs were moved from the middle of the house to the back (something my mom wanted to do for years). The bedroom I slept in until I was a teen and moved into the basement bedroom was gone, combined with the master to make a master suite. The master bathroom had gone from a half bath to a full bathroom. The new kitchen went from the front door to the door to the garage and devoured the eat-in nook where we'd had so many family dinners. I could continue, but you get the idea.
This wasn't home anymore. It was just some house.
I think it would have been easier if he'd updated what was there, rather than gutting the place and starting over. It was disorienting and I literally had to study the pictures to figure out where some of them were taken. My dad couldn't figure it out and I had to show him in the images where the door to the garage was, explain what had happened to the bedrooms.
I keep reminding myself that the memories remain even if the home isn't the same as it had been when those moments happened, but it's still a sickening feeling to know it's completely different now.
