My family will never be the same.
For fifteen years, I grew up three boys from single digits to adulthood. For fifteen years, I raised an infant to a young lady.
And for fifteen years, we really lived. Like full, boisterous, chaotic, loud, happy, sad, curious, hope-filled, life-filled, love-filled days and months and years.
Together.
On this plot of land.
Beneath this Midwest sky.
Surrounded by friends who’ve become family.
And now, we see the horizon growing closer and the path yawning far ahead and away.
As I look around this place in light of a sales sign coming soon—I am haunted by the sounds of my children—not as a teen and young adults of the present, but I hear the baby voices, their playful shouts. I hear all the life lived here. And I remember the way we were.
I’ve never had audible memories until now. Perhaps I am losing more than a home but my mind too??
I think it would be easier if they were still 8, 6, 4, and under a year. A move has its challenges with those ages, but the only bittersweetness to be felt was all my own. They were too young to know what they would miss, to think they might never see that friend again, that home.
Now, though, despite the excitement of a new adventure, grief has stricken most of us, and it keeps coming in waves.
Goodbyes are heavy on that horizon, and the anticipation builds up like a giant barricade. How will we ever pass through without pieces of us left behind?
We loved life here.
We lived life here.
I raised my family here. I grew roots in temporary soil…thinking it was permanent.
And those years just flew by.
And I just keep hearing them, almost seeing them, and I wonder at this backdrop of a life so full, how can we say goodbye for good?
angie dicken 