Saying Goodbye to Our House

Change is hard. Everyone knows that (or has become acutely aware of this fact within the past few months).

For me, a particular change has been weighing on me in the last month.

We sold our house. We…being my parents. Our house…being my childhood home in Cleveland, Ohio.

My family built this house & moved into it in 2004. My Dad was talking to me about it and said “It’s hard because we built this as our dream home.”

This is my Dad and I in what would soon be his office (we are pretending to type at his computer),also please do not ask about the outfit.

A huge kitchen, a large patio, a basement with space for us kids. And it was really a dream. My Mom is an AMAZING chef and with my Dad’s help, hosted tons of parties with delicious homemade meals for friends/family. My Dad’s favorite thing to do is eat outside on our patio in the summertime (I never really understood the obsession with eating outside…until being quarantined in my studio apartment in Chicago…now I get it! The more fresh air, the better!).

One last backyard celebration for my 24th birthday!

I think moving out on my own after college gave me a better appreciation for having a house like my parents had. So much hard work goes into saving, planning, building, and keeping up with a house like we had. I know I do not nearly have as much space as our house in Cleveland, but I mean jeez, I get it now how mad my Mom would get when I wouldn’t vacuum my room (or forget to take the chicken out of the freezer, or not dust my room… sorry Mom!). There’s a lot of house to keep up with! But honestly, I want that one day. And I admire my parents for doing all the work to make that dream house a reality, because it was an awesome 16 years in that thing.

Returning to my house, one last time

So I came home for 2 weeks in June, right as my parents were preparing to sell it. As soon as I walked in the front door, I was shocked. My room didn’t look like “my room” anymore. All our family photos were taken down, the whole house was repainted. It was weird to see this place I remembered one way, looking completely different.

And then the For Sale sign went up in the front lawn and I started to cry! My house! All the memories, the spot where I would always eat dinner, the spot where I found out I got into Miami, the spot where my Mom and I would play cards, the room where we used to keep our pet bunnies. Then, I had to go through all my stuff in my room to begin packing/sorting my things. From doing this I learned that a) I don’t throw out cards I guess, I had like probably 200+ cards that I collected from childhood and b) I really have always been a writer, ever since I was little, but the topics and mediums have just changed a little (recording my rec softball league’s wins/losses on my green plastic journal to writing about my twenties on a Google Doc!). It was just flooding me and I was really emotional.

So I went back to Chicago, and my parents officially listed it right after I left. Within the first 6 days of it being on the market, it sold.

Last week, I returned to the house one last time to pick up a few extra things (half of these things were my things, the other half were plates/silverware/furniture pieces that my Mom gave for me to use in my apartment! Score!).

I joked with my boyfriend, Sean, that I needed to say goodbye to all my light switches and every outlet and every piece of furniture (reminiscent of Goodnight Moon but like replace the “Goodnight” with “Goodbye”).

And pulling out of the driveway one last time, I was doing really good, I had it in a good place in my head, but then my Mom stops in front of the house and says “Say one last goodbye,” then she starts crying…so now I am a wreck and we haven’t even gotten 1 minute toward Chicago!

What a house really means

So I guess I wanted to write about this specific topic because a) it’s what is going on in my world currently and b) I think that a lot of twenty-something people have parents that are downsizing or looking to move, and end up selling the home that they grew up in.

Kind of like I stated in my first blog, I know that this topic/life event is fairly common amongst people my age, but I do not know if people really talk about this. So, my intention in sharing this is just being open with my emotions through this event and hoping that maybe there are some commonalities with others’ experiences. For me, the emotions of this event have been, if I am being honest with myself, kind of exhausting. It’s not even the stuff or the appearance of the house that has made me emotional, it’s the memories. It’s the finality of seeing my Mom hammer in a For Sale sign in the front yard. It’s the loss of the home base we had for so long, and the impending uncertainty of finding a new one.

What the house really meant to me was the place where all the memories were made. And something my Mom reminded me of while I was home was that “Houses are temporary, memories are forever.” So true!

Beauty, ain’t she?!

For the new people moving into our house, I hope it is also the place where their memories are made. Now, maybe they will arrange the furniture differently, and maybe they won’t have Bruno Mars posters hung up in their closet, or the same ringer Hide-N-Seek spot, or a secret hiding place for beer bottles under their bed (oop!), but I can only hope they make their own “spots” and love it as much as we did.

Thank you for reading, and let me know in the comments or in a message if you have had this same experience. It’s always comforting knowing you are not alone, and someone else has been through what you have been through.