When It’s Hard to Leave a Home

I’m a sentimental fool.  I blame my dad, because I get it from him.  I really should blame my grandma, because it’s really her fault.  She started it all.  I say that lovingly, though, because I like our sentimental hearts.

I’m getting ready to move across the country…again.  I came to Virginia from California and now I’m heading back.  The house we’ve been living in for the past three years has been one very special home.  We decided to rent it without seeing it first.  I’ll never forget that December night we drove up and saw it for the first time.  I was so relieved that it looked like the pictures.  As I took my first walk through this house, I fell in love with it.

And here I now sit, with boxes stacked all around me while the movers pack up our things.  My heart aches, because this is one of those special homes.  There are just some homes that never leave you.  It’s almost as if they become part of your family as much as any material thing can.  I feel like this home absorbed our memories and they will forever remain in the walls.  It’s my son’s first home and he will never remember it and that just breaks my heart.  I rocked him in our bedroom near the window.

It’s a window that I chose to leave all the curtains off of, because I wanted the sunlight to wake me every morning.  It’s where I saw the seasons come and go.  I’d see the peace of winter in all its silence.  I loved when spring would announce its return with buds on the trees.  I’ll miss seeing the birds playing in the trees in summer.  And the fall sunsets from this window are burned in my memory.  It’s my favorite spot.

I’ve lived in a lot of houses in my military days.  All the houses have been good and meaningful and I’m grateful for each one of them in their own way.  But, this one is different and I’ve been grieving it for weeks.  Maybe it’s because it’s the home where it felt the most like ours.  Maybe it’s because it’s not a base home.  Or maybe it just has that something.  There are other homes in my life that feel as if they should always be apart of my family:  My grandparents’ homes and my home as a teen.  There’re just too many memories, too much history.  Like I said, I’m a sentimental fool.  Things just get to my heart and this house is one of them.

So, pretty soon, we will walk through this empty house, lock the door, and drive away.  I’ll never live in this house again and I’ll probably never see it again.  Maybe, I will.  Yet, it’s still hard to leave a house where you feel like your children’s laughs will linger in ghostly memory.  It’s been a good house and a good ride.  See ya on the other side of the country.