No memories at all

My house is now in escrow, which means that in about two months from now I’ll have to move out. That brought on some I can’t imagine thoughts about moving.

Here goes:

After living in this house for over forty-two years I can’t imagine living anyplace else. The house was brand new when we bought it and to me it was like a palace. It has three levels with four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a huge kitchen with more cabinets than I knew what to do with, plus a living room, family room, and a formal dining room. Luckily, we already had the dining table – an old claw foot oak piece with lots of leaves to accommodate twelve people at the many dinners I used to prepare. Now I have no idea who will end up with that table and the antique sideboard also in the dining room. There’s no room for them in the tiny apartment I’m planning to move into. Actually, I’ll have no room for most of my things in that apartment. And I can’t visualize what I’ll do with all of them. At least I’ll have three choices: give them away, throw them away, or sell them and if they’re lucky they’ll go to another family and be loved for another forty years or so.

That’s the thing. Even though we had our share of bad experiences here – especially the death of our son Paul, we had many, many happy days in this house. And there was no way that I could imagine it would end like this – my spending my last days here alone and lonely in all these empty rooms. Now instead of wanting to stay and keep my memories alive, I can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t imagine ever being happy here again. No, what I want  is to experience some new place that doesn’t have any memories in it at all.