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Letting go of my home was harder than I thought it would be.

This home was the center of the world. Chris and I build a life there, we worked there, we made our family there. Then Chris died and one by one the animals passed away. Then my dog Rizzo, who had always been more friend than dog, died and suddenly there was too much space for me – if it was only me. It wasn’t. Tragedy, my lone cat, was and is still around, but the one cat couldn’t help me fill the endless space that surrounded me.

A couple of years after Chris died I met Steve and he was a great surprise. He asked me if I was ever going to sell the house and I told him “no.” Months later he asked again if I was going to sell the house and I said “we can make it a vacation home.” More time passed and he asked again if I was going to sell the house and I said “at the beginning of the year.”

The year came and I began the cleaning out process. Emptying rooms, and drawers, and cabinets. Within the month it was ready and listed and it sold on the first day. I was thrilled and heartbroken. It isn’t that I didn’t want to sell the house – I did, but still the prospect of losing the place that had birthed so much life made me ache.

A couple of weeks before closing, it rained. It rained hard. I loaded a couple of boxes with towels because, depending on how hard the wind was blowing, sometimes the rain came in the front door or down the chimney. It would soon be someone else’s house but for now it was mine and it was my responsibility. I went the following day to take care of my home and when I got there, everything, literally everything – was fine. The house was unscathed and it dawned on me that the house didn’t need me anymore.

I took a last walk through the house, freshly painted and empty. It was empty when we moved in but somehow it was emptier now. Emptier now because of all the love and color that filled the walls, because of dogs running throughout the back yard and cats lounging at their leisure and Chris sitting in his chair. It was emptier now because it no longer held anything for me but memories. The house was no longer a home. Somehow, the house had moved on without me.

I walked about the empty rooms, readying myself to leave for the final time. It occurred to me that something was dying and that something is always dying. It also occurred to me that something was being born and something is always being born. I thought that my experience of this home could never be recreated. That it was gone. But this wasn’t actually the case, it just appeared to be gone. All we ever learn – we keep. What changes is the familiar and that is the only loss.

I think the house is happy that I dropped by. Perhaps a bit mystified by my thinking, but happy nonetheless, as it waits for its new owners. The fact is there are days when I still grieve over the loss of Chris. Because it is never one loss. Loss begets loss and in the truest sense life is all about loss, all about letting go. So as I close the door behind me for the last time and say goodbye to the place I used to call home I realize that a building is just a building, a place is just a place, a person is just bones and sinew. What makes a building a home, and a place sacred and what makes a person loved is not what they are, but what we imbue them with. We live with the illusion that the world is as we see it, but it is not. We are an integral part of the tale, in fact – the story doesn’t exist without us. So my old home is now a house, my old address is just a place and I am just a mass of atoms that will make a new home in a new sacred place and become a new me.

Sometimes we act as if we are only witnesses to the world. The truth is that world is what we make of it. And, in the end, the capacity we have for love is the capacity we have for grief. The deeper we experience one, the deeper our experience of the other will be. They both exist as part of our stories. Both are beautiful and both will bring us home.