Before my mom died, we had been contemplating moving. Our neighborhood had been undergoing a transformation during the last ten years and it had made us question staying there.
When we had first arrived, it was composed of residents who were in their seventies and eighties. During the cool evening hours they would work in their yards; trimming perfectly shaped hedges and neatly trimmed edges along the sidewalks. Their houses were always freshly painted, and if their garages were opened, all the tools were lined up in perfect rows on peg boards. They always had a small amount of change for buying fundraiser items - candy bars from the orchestra kids, popcorn from the Boy Scouts, and Girl Scout cookies. Were they all friendly elderly people who ask about your day or greeted you during your walks - absolutely not. One older gentlemen had stopped caring about the state of his house many decades ago, and the latest addition of an old and greased stain recliner chair on the front porch was only the most recent eye sore of the street. Additionally, the children avoided his house for fundraisers because he often came to the door in various states of undress. Nothing exposed, but a lack of concern for his condition.
And then the older residents would move out. Some went to nursing homes or assisted living places. Other residents went to - well, I don't know the state of their eternal souls, so we can only wonder where they went. As they left, the houses, being part of a working class neighborhood, were bought by investors for rental properties. It didn't take very many years for the hedges to lose their sharp edges or for the yards to fall apart. The street started to have another beat, another rhythm to it. On weekends, you could listen to the neighbors two doors down yelling, shouting, and threatening each other. The more drink, the louder it was. And they weren't afraid to reprimand the neighbors either. Oh, and if your dog is barking louder than their fight, they're going to band together and start yelling at you. One time the neighbors above them couldn't keep their break up private and they were yelling in the street. They yelled at them to take it inside.
One time someone on the run had dumped a gun in one of the yards. My daughters woke from their sleep because the movement of flashlights in the backyard had awoken them. It was law enforcement trying to find the discarded weapon. Another night it was gunshots just a few doors down. The drug houses had started moving in. I'm sure our experiences were nothing like the inner city, but for our once quiet and family friendly neighbor, it was a troubling change.
Two weeks after my mom died, a house came up for sale across town, on the Westside. Ohh, a different zip code. The desired zip code of our town. Yes, our small town only had one desired zip code. The other zip code included the North side, the downtown, and our neighborhood. The post office had a separate zip code for the PO Boxes. If you lived in the annexed part of town that had bad water, roads that ended in weird dead ends, and where people could get a way with shooting off illegal fireworks, that was the last zip code.
We just had to put our house up for sale. It only needed a new bathroom, the sheetrock fixed in the basement, and a new roof. Suddenly, I put a frenzy of energy into preparing the house for our listing. I enlisted Hero Hottie into putting in a new vanity and floor into the bathroom. Enlisted? I think I was half crazed with something that had overtaken me. It wasn't grief -- it was the opposite of grief. It was avoidance. The more energy I shifted into preparing the house, the less I had to think about the state of my heart. You would expect that as I repaired, cleaned, and organized my house - the ever widening grief would diminish.
Hero Hottie liked the idea of moving Baby Blueberry into a different school district and so he poured his energy into the bathroom. Which as we pulled up the floor, we realized it needed a whole new sub flooring. He gritted his teeth and got to work.
Grief blossomed and bloomed like the dandelions taking over my lawn. What was a house, a home, except something you escaped from when the pain was too much. My parents haven't given me an anchor of wood and shingles in my childhood. The only stable thing in my life had been my parents, especially my mom.
And she was gone.
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