Moving On!

This has been our home for 27 years, come January, and now I'll be moving on. There were a lot of happy memories here and the willow tree in the front yard was a favourite tea time place. Then the city came and cut it down because a neighbour, who had long since moved away, didn't like the way the willow shed its branches when the wind blew.

I was 27 when I got married so I have lived in this house as long as I had lived my whole life before I married. I moved about twenty times before I got married and we moved another ten or so times in the first ten years of our marriage. I wanted a home, a place where I could stay and not be constantly on the move. From this house I went to work and from this house I retired. Here we entertained friends from the United Church we both attended and here we stopped entertaining friends when Clarence's sister and her husband became a part of our lives one year after we bought this house. Our lives changed and began to revolve around Clarence's brother and his sister and there was no longer time or energy to entertain friends. From this house, I returned to the church I had grown up in as a child and finally became a member and felt I was where I belonged. The United Church was going through growing pains and had decided it could not tolerate intolerance, not realizing the irony of its stance and thereby discouraging those who would have chosen a gentler way. I no longer fit and my husband was uncomfortable with my being there, in "his church", so I went back to "my church". Here in this house we had family suppers every month to celebrate birthdays, holidays and other special occasions and here in this house, my husband fell one night and was never the same again for ten long, question filled years, until he fell again the night before his sister's funeral and never came back to this house again. Now I will be leaving and moving on, not only to a new place to live but to a new way of living. It's time to say, "Good-bye, house" as I said good-by to so many others over the years but none as much a part of our married life together as this one. There were many special times and times that could have been better. We said good-bye to our first grandson at nine weeks old from this house. The marks in the carpet from his carbed were there long after he was buried in the prairie graveyard beside the grandfather he had never met. A bride and a groom left this house to start their own families and three young mothers celebrated the christening of their babies from this house. Those were good times. The furniture is almost all gone now; only what's going with me is still here. The guest rooms, the family room downstairs, all are empty and waiting for new owners to fill them with life. The bookcases are empty, the pictures are down from the wall and packed away and the patio furniture and outdoor fountain have gone to new homes, as has also the dining room table around which we gathered so often. It's been a long good-bye, a long knowing that we had to go, and a shorter knowing that I would be going alone. Alone, but not alone. I'll take the good memories with me and leave the others behind. It's only a house, only a yard and garden, and only furniture that I'm leaving. I'm taking "ME" with me and will continue to, wherever I may go from here.