My Family Home

The good news?  I think we've finally sold my father's house.

The bad news?  The new owners plan to tear it down and build a bigger house on the lot.  This is what happens in Birmingham pretty regularly.  The land itself is so valuable that the smaller homes just get eaten up.  The people want the land and they want a BIG house.  There's nothing wrong with my parents' house.  It's solid.  I guess it's over 50 years old.  It doesn't look all that up-to-date.  But it's structurally sound and it served our family well.

I was there today.  We have emptied quite a bit of it now.  Some of my mother's sweet and lovely furniture is now in my living room.

But when I go in that house it still feels like home.  It's so full of memories.

A large portion of the flower bed in the front has all the dirt turned over.  I guess that was from the property inspection.  They wanted to inspect the property to make sure there were no buried oil tanks or something.  They aren't even inspecting the house itself.  I remember the impatiens my mother used to plant in that bed.

I went in to my mother's bathroom with the pink wallpaper, thinking about how the cute little room would soon be crushed by bulldozers.

In the kitchen closet I found some little thanksgiving figures, little pilgrims-- the kind of things my mother would have on the table on holidays.  I wrapped them up to bring home.

The house was so quiet, so empty.  The warm childhood memories seemed to slip further and further into the past, emphasized by the occasional spider or cobweb.

I'm feeling a little weepy.  I remember how so many of my blogging friends were such a support in my father's last days and after his passing.

When I go back I will take some pictures to share with you.

God bless.