leaving home

  a cute picture from October

 My grandma died in December, and my grandpa died in April a few years back.   So now the house is sold and mostly empty.   Thursday we went there to help empty the second floor of the house, to get all the last remnants down the skinny, steep stairway, and to take some furniture home.

I walked all around the house and looked out all the windows, winter Wisconsin, snowy hills dropping away, sky expanding, dark dusty edges of pines.   I don't expect to ever be in this house again.  Other people will live here and this hundred year old house will belong to a new century and new people, and hopefully a new family, new memories, and our lives will evolve in other directions, also good.

But the house itself feels like a family member too.

That's the paradox of it, I suppose.  Some of the happiest moments of my life are in this house with my cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and holidays and summers and winters, and there actually isn't a single bad thing I can remember.  We weren't prone to arguing or drama, so there is none of that to recall.  People were accommodating and kind, for real.

The food was always delicious and the reception on the TV was reliably terrible.   There was always work being done--either farming or insurance, so the barn and buildings outside and the office off the kitchen manifested the unity between work and family.

My dad had interesting parents too, a sweet dad and a spicy, funny mom.  They were older and I was younger, and in the years since they've been gone I appreciate them even more, the people they were, the ways they showed love to me and each other.

 my mother receiving a kiss from her mother in law, the father in law right behind

My dad has said no matter what his dad was doing, if he arrived, his father would stop and come to greet him.

Yes, like that.

 my grandpa and my little brother

Leaving there hurt so much today, deep in the chest.  I looked out the windows and took pictures of what I saw, and of the wall paper in the closet.  I wandered around in the quaint slanty-ceiling bedrooms upstairs, sat on my grandparents' bed, and brought home a bin of Grandma's clothes which I will so enjoy wearing, odd as that sounds.

It was very cold in the driveway, and the kids were waiting, so I didn't run down the hill to look in the milkhouse one last time.  I know what it looks like, no need.   Later I heard John had looked in all the outbuildings.  Thank you, John.

As we left my aunt arrived, something about crystal candle holders--a gift I had given my grandparents at an anniversary.  My aunt was worried about this, wanted me to have them back, but even when they were in my hands, I told her:  I don't remember.

But her I definitely wanted.  In all this I've been craving my aunts.  They were teenagers when I was born and now we're all not kids anymore.  We have grown kids and grandchildren, and this whole long confusing year has been nothing but a journey of trust and love, and we have lost a lot.

When our car rounded the driveway, I looked at the old barn, the ditch full of bare twisted lilac bushes and then the big painted sign with their names:  Ken and Irene.  Yes, sixty-five years of them here, it's true.  Ken and Irene lived here, and this very sad, but mostly lucky whole family did too.

love always, Val