…… to sell our house.
Not my home, the one I live in when I’m in Texas, but our house.
The one where Jim and I raised our children.
The one the boys and I lived in at the time of his death.
The one we stayed in during the first several years of the horrible “after”.
The one that used to be a home.
The one Jim and I thought we’d own for a very long time.

But “we” didn’t.

I haven’t lived in that house for a year now. A year on May 1st, to be exact. I signed a contract on my new house that day and never spent another night in the other one.
In September of last year I started renting it to a family. The day I signed the rental agreement was the last day I was in that house.
The last day I drove down that street.
I’ve never been back, even though I still live in the same small community.
I was done.
I didn’t want to have anything more to do with that house and looked forward to the day I could sell it.

Or so I thought.

I signed a contract last night.
And this morning, the power of that signature …… the officialness of it …… is bringing tears to my eyes.
I still don’t want that house, and I really, really don’t want to live in it again.
But I guess my heart kind of does.
Not as it is now, but as it was.
In my “before”.

I’m crying for something I don’t really want.
And for something I simply can’t have.
Ever.

But then again, it’s not that simple.
Here in the “after”, my emotions rarely feel simple. They’re often mixed with feelings I can’t describe, emotions I don’t understand, tears that sometimes come out of nowhere.
And that’s difficult to grasp, let alone explain to someone else.
Or write about on a blog.

None of us can have the past.
But it’s not really the past that I want.
It’s the now …… that was supposed to be.
I wish with all my heart that “we” were still in that house.
In our home.
But wishes don’t always come true.
That one never will.

I know that I’ll be relieved when we close on it in a couple of weeks.
I also know that I’ll most likely cry at that closing.
But hopefully not for long.

My “after” is good.
It’s not what I wanted, but it’s good.
The future is unknown, but it’s also something I look forward to experiencing.
Finally.

Life goes on.
And I’m moving forward.
Sometimes with tears, but I’m ok with that.

And, in what can only be described as the irony of moving forward …… the day that I signed a contract to sell our house, Daughter #2 signed a contract to buy her first house.

Sometimes life goes full circle.
🙂