Last week my mom, dad, and I helped my grandmother move out of the house she has lived in for 30 years. It was an exhausting day, but the pain was much more emotional than physical.
That house is the place my mom stayed to recuperate after I was born and the first home I ever knew. The house's backyard is where my parents' beloved pets are buried. It is where I spent many, many happy hours playing with toys and having sleepovers and eating caramel ice cream and my Nana's scrambled eggs. I learned to read from my Nana in that house while sitting at the kitchen table. Most importantly, it's the last place my Papa lived before he died.
The house holds a lot of memories, good and bad. I remember having Hannukah and birthdays at that house, seated around the dining room table, Nana at one end and Papa at the other. I remember creating elaborate scenarios for my dolls as my Papa sat on the couch and, inevitably, fell asleep. But I also remember running into the house after driving from the hospice to tell Nana through a tear-choked voice that her husband had passed.
It was different after Papa died. While we used to have all sorts of holidays and gatherings there, Nana now came to our house. Without Papa, the house seemed too large and empty. None of us really blame Nana for wanting to sell the house because of it.
Still, packing up my dolls and dollhouse and watching the movers cart away furniture I had played on all my life to be given to charity was really hard. It really didn't click until the very last second that I'm never going to go inside that house again. I think I'll always remember turning off the last light in the entryway, watching the house become dark and silent as moonlight streamed in from the stained glass panel on the front door. It's still surreal.
The nature of houses is a strange one. It's such a deeply personal item, and yet it's passed from family to family after years of living there. While the house had been my grandparents' for 30 years, another family had lived there for just as long before them. Despite my multitude of memories, there are thousands of memories that exist in that house from the people who lived there 40 years ago that neither we nor the next inhabitants of the house will ever know about. The family who moved in yesterday doesn't know about all the things that happened there, and maybe that's for the best.
I'm thankful for the memories that I did get to make in that house. I'm grateful for every moment that I got to spend with Papa. I'm grateful for a family that makes so many good memories that it was hard to leave a house behind. At the end of the day, the house is just a house. My family and the memories are the important part, and they'll always be with me.
