This week my parents moved out of a house that has been in my family since the 1930s. It’s an old stone house out east that my paternal grandparents had built when my father was small. My grandparents, then my parents, lived there successively. Now age has driven my parents ahead, to move halfway across the country, to settle near the youngest members of the family. I went out to help with the move for a couple of days.
It was strange to leave this place of memories for the last time, to forsake the shelter of so much meaning. In a way, leaving frees us to be entirely in the present. Memories of the house and its loving occupants will always be with me, an intangible anchor in what once was real.
Harley says
Sounds sad………..When my mom moved out of our “family” house I felt much the same.
Celia says
It was sad, but in a subtle way I don’t have words for. Luckily my parents are safe and in a place where their children can better care for them. So many of our homes, which we think are permanent, are temporary. . . . that is sobering.