Time to say good-bye…

Homes = Memories = Who You Are = Nostalgia

In 1978 a young couple with a 2-year old boy and a newborn moved into a converted 1850s farmhouse in a small town in upstate N.Y.  4 years later, a third boy was brought into the family.  Together this family grew into their home.  The boys loved exploring in the woods and fields behind the house.  The mother enjoyed making her garden beautiful and finding the perfect pieces of furniture.  Taking pride in his 1 ½ acres, the father worked hard in the yard, building tree houses, landscaping and playing catch.  The oldest boy had all of his memories growing up in this house.  His first birthday parties, his li’l work bench next to his daddy’s in the basement, catching fireflies on sultry August nights with his dog keeping pace beside him, sneaking in late from his high school parties.  Eventually he moved away to start his own life but would visit frequently.  He brought home new friends for weekend who admired the place and created their own memories.  A sister was added by marrying one of his brothers, he even found his own future wife and more memories were layered upon others.  Baby was subsumed by kid leading way to adolescent burgeoning into young adult.  Now the gray hairs are starting to pop out and face is taking on more character.  And it is time to say good-bye.

As he walks through the now half-empty rooms filled with clutter and the detritus of a life well lived, he cannot help but be inundated with emotions and recollections washing over him at every step.  That’s where his Christmas stocking always hung, that’s the room he’d escape to to read in peace, over there was where many a scheme was hatched with his brothers, the porch where his mom would call his brothers and him in for dinner is now littered with boxes.  The trees he used to climb with abandon now are now dying and sad.  As he sits in his yard with a glass of wine in his hand watching the last of more than 12,000 sunsets that have graced the last 33 years, he watches a mother deer with her three offspring frolicking in the field a few hundred feet away, aware but unafraid of his presence.  He hears his expanded family inside behind him laughing and sharing memories.

Sometimes you need a minute to yourself.  His old prom corsages are in the dumpster, the books that were read to him as a child have been donated away, the old report cards are packed away, his childhood bed now has a “For Sale” sign on it.  It’s hard, it’s painful but it’s lovely.  Who gets lucky enough to have his childhood home for so long?  So why does this luck constrict his heart so much.  It’s the death of a family member.  A silent, stalwart friend who has watched you go through your best and worst, a confidant that has listened to fervent prayers and whispers in the deep of the night, a place that no matter what has happened to you welcomes and comforts you.  Now it will watch over new people.  Their ghosts and experiences will slowly leech out of the foundations, fading into the past.  It’s as it should be.  But it doesn’t make it any easier.

The sun finally disappears behind the treeline.  He stands up, his personal time ended to rejoin the gathering inside.

In the dusky twilight, the three fawns prance and explore, trodding on paths that three little boys never will again.