Empty house

My older sister really came through for me last week and we finished closing up Mom's house. It's empty. Really, really empty. It echoes.

My parents moved to that house in 1986, the year my father unofficially retired. (He officially retired the following year after using more than 100 accumlated sick days for which he would not receive pay...so he traveled with Mom and golfed for five or six months.) It didn't take them long to fall in love with their new lifestyle - no mowing, no shoveling, and no worries when they went to New Smyrna Beach, FL from January 1st to March 31st every year.

When I heard that my parents were moving from the house I'd grown up in, the house in which they'd lived for 31 years, I was heartsick. I couldn't imagine visiting them anywhere else - I knew I'd miss the nuances of the family home, the places the old floor sqeaked, the way the sunlight streamed into the kitchen windows in the morning, the view of the bay, the sound of the buoys, the smell of the salt marshes. And once they had settled into their last digs, and I could see how happy they were - and all the "stuff" was there, the photos, the furniture, even the curtains - well, I came to an entirely different understanding of what home meant. This place, with all the love and all the memories transplanted, was home. Of course I had my own home by this time, but somehow it never acquired the same legitimacy as the places my parents lived. Even now my home feels somewhat bogus, not quite legitimate as "home."

It was awful losing Dad in 1991, but I didn't also lose my home then. Mom stayed on in the place she knew she'd never have to leave, in the place she wanted to live until the day she died. She loved everything about her house and treasured that Dad had been there with her, even though it was only for a short time. I can still hear her saying how much she loved it in the village, how much she loved her home, how happy she was to be there.

Early this morning I took a trip there, my last walk-through, my last moments to remember. I stood in her bedroom doorway and remembered how she'd be dozing in bed on Saturdays when I was on duty, how reluctant she was to get up, even though I had breakfast cooking and coffee ready. In my mind's eye I could see the sofa bed in the den, my room whenever I visited before moving back here, and I could hear her knocking on the door and bringing me coffee, chuckling about what a slug-a-bed I was. If she were brushing her teeth in her bathroom, she'd rap on the wall (shave-and-a-haircut) and I'd rap back from the kitchen (two-bits). It was an old routine that she and Dad had. I knocked on the wall this morning, one last time.

In the living room I could see the wear on the carpet near her chair, much more wear than by Dad's chair. She had a dozen years to make that difference. I pictured her sitting there in the afternoons, falling asleep in the sunshine with the newspaper on her lap. In the kitchen, I remembered he sitting at her "command center" (kitchen table), where she enjoyed watching the various comings and goings of her neighbors, did her paperwork, and ate her meals alone these past twelve years. The same place she would be sitting when we had our many arguments.

I knew this would be a hard thing to do, sell that house. It may seem maudlin and unnecessary, but I wanted to take all the time available to mourn, to actually get the tears out. I'm losing home, in a lot of ways. I'm losing the point of contact, the easy retrieval of memories. I have a lifelong habit of stuffing feelings, stuffing tears. I had to be shut down a lot of the time since coming back here - shut down emotionally about what was happening to her, about our relationship. I got stony and hard. She couldn't understand why I couldn't "lighten up." I don't understand now, either, except to acknowledge the difficult and entangled relationships that some mothers and daughters tend to have. I wasn't smart about it and I won't get another crack at it. But she's not here anymore for me to need to be defensive about my emotions. And they're leaking out of me, I can't help it, nor do I care.

Two o'clock today I sign that house over to someone who didn't know Mom, and probably couldn't care less about that. That's okay, but I really wish there was a way to present this gift, this precious location: we were happy here. There was love here. And now it's yours.