I turned the lock, closed the door, took the wooden step down, got in my car and drove down the driveway. It was the last time.
I reached for a feeling, but there was only a faint echo. I knew the next time I’d be there, my parents’ house would be gone. The house I had come back to from college, the house where my son met my grandpa, the house we’d had all those Christmases in, the picture window where I’d gotten engaged.
I thought about all of that. Thought about the person I was when my folks moved in, back in 1986, when I was a freshman in college, and the person I am now. I’m a dad and a stepdad and I’m driving an electric car. Lots of life had passed by in that house.
So I expected a big emotional wave. Something.
Nope. I guess maybe that’s because we’re going to re-do it, so it’s not a final goodbye. That part of my life is not dead; it’s being reborn, and it’s being reborn as “ours,” rather than “mine.” That’s good. That’s a reason to celebrate, not mourn.
Maybe it’s also that the memories are not entirely positive. Mom died right over there, Angie and I holding her hand at 4 a.m. Dad died upstairs, having made it through one last Christmas Eve with us and the kids. They lived full, amazing lives, and they even died in exemplary ways. But death is still death – people don’t get replaced, and the memory of it still stings.
I’ll miss the house as I’ve previously known it, a little. Sure. I’ll miss the way that back stairway creaked, and that Chinese elm shading mom’s little red couch, and I miss sound of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring blasting out of Dad’s stereo, and the infinite supply of Bordeaux in the basement, and I’ll even miss the smell, 35 years of Marlboro Reds and Crisco oil baked into the drywall. Nobody will ever reproduce that, not exactly.
I took one last trip through all the rooms, took one last lap around the outside, let the memories come – and there was really only one thing that got to me.
Mom and Dad. I miss them. That’s it.
A house is just a house, even if it’s your home. You can stream Appalachian Spring anywhere, and a framed photo of that red couch can summon the memories.
But the memory is not about the couch, or the violins, or the red wine. It’s about the people, and, though I’m very excited about the rebirth of our home, I still miss my folks.
