Dismantling - What Now?

I walked into a now empty house that was my dad's home right up until the day before his accident, which eventually claimed his life. It is a two-story brown and white Tudor on a nice property with a magnificent view out the kitchen bay windows. On a bright sunny day, especially in Spring, the trees were big and bold and beautiful with their full, serene canopy, The grass shone brightly in the sun, a vibrant green, and the flowers spread color all around creating something that looked more like a painting than a yard. We used to sit at the kitchen table with our morning coffee and just gaze at it all in silence.

After my dad passed and I knew that I needed to get his house ready for sale, my husband and I spent the last month going through 60+ years of stuff, lots of stuff. There were mementos and clothes, and pictures, lots of pictures; in every drawer of every piece of furniture, in every room of the house. The antique oak secretary desk in my dad's bedroom was filled with keepsakes and tons of pictures tucked into the pigeonholes and small drawers of the interior. I almost didn't look there. I was getting tired after spending hours looking at picture after picture. There were memories I forgot about. Some of my mom and dad with me at our neighborhood pool after I completed a race at a swim meet. There were pictures of us in our backyard from the time I was little; everyone happy and smiling at barbecues. The mahogany buffet in the dining room, with its concave grooves and black metal sliding handles, had packet after packet of old Kodak snapshots from the 1970s in every drawer, nook and cranny. My mom kept everything. Every picture from the time I was born documenting every family event was there and it was overwhelmingly emotional. 

It took a while to go through everything.  When I thought I was done, I found more pictures. I felt that I had to go through it all or I would miss something. I gathered up what we were keeping, the things that mattered most, filled bags and boxes, loaded them up in the car, and took it away from where it had all been all these years. 

Weeks later, we came back one last time to check to see that nothing had been missed. Walking into the house that I grew up in, a house that had been in the family as long as I could remember, was strange, almost eerie. It was quiet and cold. The life had been sucked out of it, and it was just all gone, the house emptied of meaning for me. I walked around the house from room to room to check one last time to be sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.  This was the last time I would be there before we closed the door forever, turned in our keys, sold it to another family, and turned the page on this chapter, permanently. 

I once passed a historic mansion in Jim Thorpe that stood majestically on a hill high up overlooking the town. When I took a tour of the mansion, I learned that it had once been a family home and it sat for years and years with no family and no visitors. And my first thought was to wonder if the house was lonely with no one to love it as it just sat there gathering dust. And now here I was, feeling like I was abandoning my family home.  I didn’t think I could ever drive down this street again. As I pulled out of the driveway on that bright sunny, warm spring day, I took comfort that another family was coming to fill it with love. But I also left a part of me behind, a part of my identity. 

By closing this chapter of my life, selling my father’s home, I realized that I was dismantling - all I had known before. These things would not exist again, at least not in the same way. I was holding on to some pieces of that life, but they were just tokens waiting to be reorganized in some new way. Not sure what that new way would be, but a part of me, along with my dad and his house, was no longer. A part of me didn't know who I was really without my dad. He had been so much a part of my essence. We were so close. We hung out, had great food, and drank great red wine. After he passed away, I felt a bit of abandonment mixed into my grief. I know he was 92. I know he had a great life, but he left me. Having lost my mother years before, was I now an orphan?   What now?