Today a new family closed on the old family home, a house that had been in my family for over 100 years.
It was the house my grandmother was born in; the one I knew as a child when we had bustling Sunday dinners and raucous holidays. It anchored my childhood memories and identity after my parents moved us out to the suburbs.
This was the first home I knew as an adult when I moved out of my parents’ house: I lived in the second floor apartment and paid my grandmother, who lived on the first floor, just utilities. She offered me the chance to begin my adult life, and with blissful naivete and ignorance at the time, I thought it was just what families did. The penny didn't drop until years later, when I moved out, that she also needed my help but didn't want to ask for it. My living with her while I was finishing up my graduate degree and teaching at three colleges, didn't just give me my independence, it sustained hers too.
She was already 80 years old when I moved in, and in return for not charging me rent, I mowed the lawn and shoveled the driveway. In winter, when the roads were treacherous for even nimble drivers, and downright terrifying for the elderly, I would drive her to appointments or to the grocery store. When the weather was good, and she could driver herself, I was often here when she returned to help her carry groceries in. There were several times in the years we shared that house when I called an ambulance for her. When I finally left the area for a full-time job, my grandmother had to move into an assisted-living facility. That was when I understood what we had given each other.
The house sat vacant for the year I was away. When I returned, I moved in so that my parents could figure out the next step, and eventually, I bought the house with their help. The house and I were never meant to live together forever, but it afforded me a secure and familiar place to launch my full adult life in; I knew, when the time came, it would also afford me leverage into a home a wanted to buy.
When Jason moved in, he took that house, and made it our home. He painted and fixed and decorated; we lost weekends in antique stores and flea markets. With his artists' training and a his bargain-hunter's soul, he took a random collection of items and whirled them around a room to make a statement. It became the home we dreamed about our future in, planned our wedding in; it was the safe space I sought refuge in after Jason died.
In many respects, Jason's absence made it much clearer to me that the house and I had to part ways. If I didn't leave soon, it would quickly become a shrine to that life, and I would be its Miss Havisham.
When I put it on the market last September, I had no idea how long it would be before it could have a new life.
Cheers, house🥂 You and I are moving forward to a different future.
It’s not the one either of us planned on, but we’ll figure it out.
