I hear you, Echo.

The girls have just left for ballet class, one of the last ones they will have here at the local rec center. Their dance performance is this Saturday.  It will mark the last weekend of activities in our home prior to our move. The house is closing, and May 26^th is fast approaching. Our house has Sold.

We have been taking things off the walls and you can now hear echoes more clearly than at any other time. It used to be my voice and my wife’s voice that you could hear before, but as the girls were born and more things went up on the wall, framing our lives and our home, the echoes seemed to disappear.
Now, they are back. Almost as if the house is speaking to us.

The past few mornings the girls have been getting up early and not coming downstairs but going straight into their playroom and playing. They have not done that in a long time, maybe they realize that their time here is dwindling down as they are very aware we are moving. Maybe the house is calling to them, “come play, come and play”. They seem to have taken it in stride, especially with this past weekend’s garage sale event, that the community had. All of our extra items we don’t wish to take with us out for sale to others.
I am listening to Pandora as I always do and a song came on “Where we once stood”.
Couldn’t help but make me think of our home and how very soon it won’t belong to us. My wife told me that after church this Sunday she finally heard and got the message after many weeks of going there to hear the sermons. I told her that whether we are in a castle or in a tent, as long as we are together, happy, loving one another and healthy, we will always be fine and I will be happy also. She agreed.
Still, I tend to get attached to things, cars, places and now a home, my home, my first home. The only home I have known and the first place my daughters called home, or our casa.

My mood seems to be matching the day, it is raining and overcast. Makes me want to take a long nap, with my family in our bed all of us together. To stay here, a snapshot of all things good and prosperous for us. I have to remind myself we did not plan to move because I had lost my job and we could not afford the house any longer, but to move up North to be closer to my in laws as the girls love them so. I am not going begrudgingly, not at all. I know it is the right thing for my wife and my daughters. I am just fine with that. I just wish we could transplant this house, my job up North, to be next to them.
Losing my job because of the layoff has made this more difficult as I feel we are leaving everything behind. It is good practice for me to apply the lessons I have learned in the past and to stop looking in the rear view mirror as the road ahead is long and filled with many new adventures. Nothing new can come into my hands, if I keep them clenched holding on to things long gone. I am opening up my hands and praying for them to be filled with new things for myself and my family. A new home, a new life, a new career, financial stability and financial freedom from worry. For happiness to stay with us and for blessings and favors to continue to find us.

I have started to take more pictures around the house lately, to remind the girls of certain events during our time here, and to help keep the memories that were so special to me, to us, alive. I know this place will eventually be just another place that we lived in, I had just hoped that it would be easier for me to say goodbye to these walls. They have been immersed in our love, our laughs, our bad times and good times. We have spilled many drinks of gatherings on the floor, many bits of food crumbs, for all the dinners we have shared here, as a family and while having guests over.
Our daughters were conceived in our bedroom and their laughter filled this quiet house. Replacing the echoes that were very prevalent in the beginning.

Now, there are more boxes that fill the house than toys. The pink dresses are being put away, to be opened up and used in a new location. And very soon, the house that became a home to me, we will be leaving, and driving away from it one last time, to never return again. Feels like I will be leaving a loved one behind, hoping the next family will be just as kind to it and appreciative of it, as we were.

Maybe before stepping outside the house for the last time, and locking the door behind us, I will speak to the house and simply say “Thank you, Goodbye”. Praying to hear the echo say, Your Welcome, Goodbye.

For Sale….a home.

 

I stood in the midst of the empty house,
It was silent, empty, and bare,
gone was the laughter the tears and the life,
and the family that once lived there.
I stood there observing, to try to revive
the memories this house had to share,
the secrets, excitement, unhappiness too,
these feelings so willing to bear.
I heard children playing and lapping up life,
I heard adults talking and scolding,
This house bore it all with its solid repose,
and accepted with wisdom beholding.
I stood in the midst of the empty house,
with a feeling of sadness around,
abandoned and empty, a lonely shell,
for the place never uttered a sound,
it was silent and bare, where the rooms had been stripped
and the furniture taken away,
the paint had been scratched and the floor left unwashed
when the house was abandoned that day.
The ghosts from its past walk through each lonely room,
and I sigh as I button my coat,
I slam the front door with an echoing bang
and a lump seems to lodge in my throat-
for there on the green lawn for all eyes to see
with dark letters outstanding on pale
is a board standing taut in the cold winter sun
with the large, lonely wording- “For Sale”.

Margaret Hanning~~

Just 2 drinks

Time passes along, with small moments always being missed on a daily basis.

The saying ‘time waits for no man’ is correct, it marches onward, to some unforeseen, and unknowable destination that no one will ever see.

My sister turned 40 this year. Her birthday was last month, and the family waited and held our breath, hoping her husband would get some momentum around her celebration bash.
Of course she protested, that she did not want anything fancy done for her, no big fuss made over herself. And of course he bought it, hook, line and sinker.

So, her birthday came and passed, with no grand overture on her behalf. Now, this would have been enough to have more than a few of us say tsk tsk tsk, but there was an accompanied insult that went along with this.
My nephew, her only son graduated this year from High School. She really wanted to go all out and do a big party for him, she planned for months on end, reservations, food, people, invitations etc etc.
She even bought him a trip to NY City for a week to hang with his parents one last time and his female cousin.

Alas, as the party through nearer to the time of celebration, she asked him how many of his friends he was going to invite. He said none. ??
My sister asked why none, this is your party. He more or less referenced it was not his party, but a party for the family, a party he did not want nor ask for.
There was no visits to the emergency room that evening, which was probably the only good thing I can say about the conversation. Needless to say, a few days later she cancelled the bash for him and informed everyone it was not going to happen.

Comments aside for my Nephew and Brother in Law, this is not me trying to bash them as to simply build a platform for my sisters past few months. I love them both, but really had wished other options or choices would have been made in regards to her. As she is the type of Mother and Wife that is always giving toward them.

So, here we are, a surprise outing for my sister last night, just her and me. My wife suggested it that way as she believed that my sister’s time with me on an outing would be one she wouldn’t forget. And that is exactly the way to describe last night, pretty sure she won’t forget it.

You see, after the tapas, the Irish Whisky, the Chardonay, the Pinot Gris, the beers and not to mention being swept up into a Gay Pride Parade, while crossing the street to get to another bar, there was that one moment of another bad choice.
I decided that the evening would not be topped of correctly, unless I drove us back home.

The outing turned out to be one of catching up with my sister, and celebrating her late 40th birthday, but it was also my night to get immersed in my own sufferings of sadness again.
I have been unemployed now for about 4 months.
I am an Implementation Consultant, who just recently received my MBA last May, with about 10 years of experience doing this type of work. I have been looking for work for so long now, that it is putting a strain not only on myself, but my wife and marriage.

So, as the libations kept flowing last night, the kink in my armor started to dissolve away, and the creek of self-pity flooded into my mind.
I made a bad choice to drive home drunk, there were no injuries that I wasn’t ready to accept last night for myself.
The problem with this all was my sister was in the car with me as I drove intoxicated.
I fear that she was genuinely concerned and scared while in the car. It is hard to make amends for that.

Luckily, no one was hurt, at least not to the body other than a few kneel downs at the porcelain high court of jesters. My sister made it home ok, my brother in law followed me home and I awoke alone in my bed with the Mrs. on the couch.

The smell of the alcohol is gone today, the headaches have subsided, the obligatory apologies to my family about driving while drunk was sent out, as well as a few apologies to old friends who I drunk texted to say hello last evening.
BUT, the cloak of despair and sadness hang heavy around my neck today.
Thinking all the time that I should just give up and quit, but truly not even knowing how to do that?
I have a wife and 2 little ones, I need to find work.
My wife makes a great income but she has to work alot of hours doing what she does. It is wearing her down, and I feel so useless. I just want to take away the pain, the pressure the sadness from her.
I let down my guard last night, hell who am I kidding, I wanted to get just pissed drunk.
Almost a sense of “I am due” to get this drunk feeling.

Tomorrow my wife will go back to work, she is a bit sick this weekend, but she won’t miss work. I will be home with the two little ones as I have been religously now for months. I told my wife today that I am just so tired of the same day repeating itself day after day. Nothing new, nothing different.

She said yes….I know.