A home is a place like no other. You grow up there and then once you're gone, it's the one place you always want to get back to. But what happens when you can't go back anymore?
Growing up, I had many places I called home. I had the house where I lived with my parents and then the house where my grandparents lived. I would spend my summers there during the day and then have the occasional sleepover here and there. A home was wherever family was and I loved every moment of it.
The thing about getting older that most people tend to forget or but aside is that we have to learn to say goodbye at some point. Whether it's saying goodbye to loved ones or memories, it is always a hard concept to grasp. In my case, it is time for me to say goodbye to a childhood home.
My nana's home was a special place. On top of staying there during the summers growing up, I also lived there with my father for a few years. It became more than a home where my Nana lived, but a home that I shared with her.
Now that home belongs to a new family who will create new memories that will be absorbed in the walls and scratched into the floors.
As my nana lives in her new home, I want her to always remember the moments that were made in that house before she can't remember them for herself. In a way, this letter is for her as well.
That house made a family and kept a family going. It was a place where seven grandchildren would run around reeking havoc and always causing too much trouble. It was also the house where we all said goodbye to a loved one.
We saw the circle of life making its way around in the midst of the laughter and games.
We all spent every Christmas and every Easter Egg hunt in that house and now the annual events are changing.
Being a child, you never think about leaving the place that held everyone together but in the end, the house is just a house. It was never the glue that kept us coming back, it was just the meeting ground.
A family is forever and it doesn't go on sale after a couple of years. Time will take its course and change everything every now and then, but the family never changes.
The memories we make will follow us forever as we leave behind the walls we left marks on. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. :
"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
Farewell, Childhood home. I will miss you.
