There's No Timeline for Goodbye

I've done this before, said goodbye to a house I called home for a decade plus. It's definitely different this time around, however. 

This is the home I lived in while figuring out who I would be for the rest of my life. This is the home that has felt the most like a home to me. It has felt the most stable - physically, emotionally, and abstractly. It's been a great central locale for not only my siblings and I, but for the rest of our extended family as well. A place of congregation and comfortable space during the holidays. It's a place full of memories I'm actually able to recall with perfect clarity. 

Though I couldn't tell you what it looked like when we first moved in. I remember being angry that we left Oklahoma City for Kansas City, a place that was equally named (seemingly lazily) after its own state. I remember being bitter for the change of scenery, for being uprooted and forced to adapt to a new city full of new people. For being forced to start over again from day one and to recreate friendships and to still retain the essential me-ness. 

When first presented with the idea of moving, I think I was okay with it. I think the bitterness started seeping in when the reality of what that meant became clearer on the drive north. I imagine that's when it began to simmer beneath the surface before boiling over in the years to come. There was probably a fair amount of hormones mixed with emotional angst in that regard. 

That was 1994. Nearly 30 years later, we're readying the house for another family to grow and nurture their own memories within, to become whoever it is that they're destined to become over the years. The house feels very lived in, cozy, a place where many good things happened. That may just be my own bias, however, as I am both absolutely ready to say goodbye to it while still clinging to parts of it as simply HOME. 

But I am also transitional, stuck between owning my own first home and letting this one go. I've not really been able to enjoy home ownership since buying mine back in April. Hell, I've only just got the majority of my furniture moved in this weekend. At some point, it will begin to feel like home for me, but today is not that day. This month may not even be that month. But someday. 

I hesitate to guess when I will stop thinking of the Bell house as HOME, but I'm almost positive that I will constantly be saying goodbye to it with every old memory that surfaces, with every happy thought of times past (and always recounted at the holidays). There's no timeline for goodbye; it's different for everyone, same with grieving. It's done when it's done, it's over when it decides to be over. Emptying this house of all its items doesn't empty it of its relevance or its importance. We're just making space for someone else to be given the same gift we were given for so long. 

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