We were all together, my Mom and Dad, my Sister and her husband. The house was hauntingly empty. That's not a surprise. It was supposed to be empty. It had to be. Yet it was still so jarring. We stood in our eating kitchen, all looking up at the wall at a place that stood a picture of teh Sacred Heart for 32 years, and prayed. My mom led the prayer, and in the middle she started tearing up. We all did. My sister notably cried out "I don't want to leave" after. I hugged my Mom and Dad with more vigor than in yaers probably, and then did the same with my sister. Telling each other we would be back.
I was back four days later. Granted, it was just to the backyard, to pick up some remaining pots and tools and stuff left behind. The new owners were travelling (and aware that we were coming back). But it already felt a bit different. There's solace in knowing that after this six month period where the new house is being built, we will again be either a 4-minute drive or 22-min walk away. But it will be that distance away from something that is very much not ours anymore.
Going back to that last moment of tearing up in prayer, I truly am surprised that this was the only time in the entire process where I cried. It helps taht the strain of the moving process only heightened the reasons why I felt it was the right time (my parents would not have been in position to physically do as much of the move in five years). But also that this was done in stages. There was the rush from March through Mid May (when the open house was) where we had to pick a whole lot of stuff, rifle through boxes stretching across decades tucked away in corners of the basement, and get the house ready for the open house - including taking a whole lot of furniture away. From May 15, it wasn't truly our home.
The second stage was my favorite which was basically Memorial Day through July 4th, where the house was sold in this process. There were insepctions and some drama around that, but we didn't do much packing - instead just enjoyed the house every weekend. It was glorious. Of course, from me coming back from India two days early to squeeze one additional weekend at home, I was definitely counting them down. When we got past July 4th, there were two more weekends left, adn way too much to do to wallow in pain and sadness.
I wrote in "The Basement" post that I would feel a wave of emotions coming up the stairs the final time. That would be July 19th (or July 20th morning). And yeah, it was definitely a "moment" - but I wasn't sad. I was happy, I was content with a life and three decades in that basement, and more than that getting more use out of it these past five years than I would've expected. Same with the last night spent in my bedroom (July 21st). It wasn't until that collective moment that this was it that it really did hit. We had some incredible memories, incredible times, incredible laughs, joys, celebrations in that house.
My Mom often compared our move as being a positive event compared to when she and her siblings couldn't get their mother to move out of their childhood Mangalore home (a home I've written about a few times). That at least we were moving at a time when the memories would largely be all positive, instead of their house turning into a bit of disrepair. My sister and I didn't really agree with this line of thinking, mainly because even at 32 years of age, our house is far more stable and livable than Lighthouse Hill was. But all the same, I understood it. My Mom and her siblings regretted not moving out earlier. We shouldn't regret moving out at the perfect time.
There's also the prospect of helping to design up the new house - something we started already in its design process (helping pick out flooring and finishes) and continued with nearly twice-weekly trips over to the house in various fornms of construction, from when it was dirt with concrete outlines, to a slab, to a real structure now with some pipe-work. I went there with my parents on July 24th - the next time any of us will see it is likely if I make a trip around September 7th or so. God knows what progress may have taken place in that six week interim. I'm already excited by it. But then, I also need to wrestle with teh question of if I do take a trip to visit the new house, do I take the quick detour to see the old one.
By then, the new owners will have likely moved in (though they do have some repairs to do, namely new flooring). Who knows what state my Mom's garden will be. Who knows what cars will be on teh driveway. It won't be the same, that much is for sure. It may be better if my last memory is walking out the front door of that empty house.
In a way, that brings me full circle, as one of my first memories is that. One of my first memories I can conceive of is myself and my sister just giggling and tumbling over and over again on the carpet of a blank room - so excited to be in this big palace that was ours. Now, in my memory it was a completely empty house, but more than likely it was just far more sparsely furnished, as it is unlikely that this took place in the fall of 1993. More likely it was a couple years later, but it is such a pure memory. Giggling and laughing at an empty house we moved into, proceeding for all of us to poor 30-32 years of memories into it, so much so that we were all crying and tearing up as we moved out. There's probably no better way for the first memory and last memory to exist.
