Chapter 1 #3
I expect more questions or perhaps protest. In truth, I would have preferred to see the new owners, to get some sense of the house’s new hopefully happily ever after.
But I also didn’t want to sit on the property, stubbornly hoping for the right buyer.
It was time. And once I decided, I wanted it gone.
“Real estate is business,” Thayden, my lawyer who helped broker the sale, reminded me. “Good business, in this case. You chose a good location and took great care of this place. But now it’s time to pass it on.”
I knew he was right, but not knowing if someone could come in and gut or even bulldoze the house is hard to think about.
“I’m realizing now, somewhere along the way, it stopped being home,” Harper says now. “I feel a little weird about it, but that’s probably good, right?”
She looks up at me again, her brown eyes concerned, looking for validation. I give her shoulder a squeeze as I swallow, thinking about the parallel between what she’s feeling and how I’ve been feeling about Michelle.
This doesn’t feel like home anymore. And my grief no longer feels like an extra limb I’m dragging around.
Neither of those things should result in grief or regret. I think they’re both signs of healthy processing, of moving on.
So why do I feel so conflicted? I really hope I don’t finally leave my grief only to carry around guilt in its place.
“It is good,” I tell her—and myself. “It’s healthy to be able to appreciate the past, to hold onto the memories, but also to say goodbye and move into a new season.”
“A new season,” she says thoughtfully. “I like that.”
So do I.
Only, I’ve overstayed my welcome in the season of secret grief so long, all this newness frankly sounds terrifying.
With the house sold, my kids all paired up, all but Collin married—and he and Molly recently got engaged—Pat and Lindy with a new precious baby we’re all obsessed with, I have no idea what this newness holds for me.
Do men in their mid-fifties really get a fresh start?
For the first time in nearly two decades, I don’t feel like I have to put on a poker face to protect my kids from a grief that once threatened to swallow me whole.
I’ve been wearing it since the moment I hit my personal rock bottom, when I realized that James was carrying a weight meant for my shoulders after Michelle died.
Once I came back to myself, I didn’t allow them to see my pain at all.
Instead, I buckled down and forced myself to get out of bed every morning and do what needed to be done.
For them, but also for me. Focusing outside myself helped ease the grief inside.
But I kept it like a secret, curled up close to my heart.
Until lately, when, for whatever reasons, the sadness has lifted, the fog of long-held grief burning off as though under the mid-morning sun.
“Yo!” Collin leans on the gate, grinning. “We’re all packed up and ready to caravan back. Y’all coming or what?”
“Give us another minute,” Harper says, and I’m grateful for a final few quiet moments standing with my daughter in a spot that has borne witness to so much of our lives.
I can almost picture Michelle standing here alongside us, tsking as she shakes her head, telling me to use the big brain she always teased I kept behind my stubborn skull.
This lessening of my grief is not some kind of betrayal. It’s not dishonoring the happy years we had together. Or the really hard last year of her life.
Move on, big guy, Michelle would tell me if she were here. Go on. Get to living.
And I think this constructed-memory version of my late wife is right. Whatever that looks like now.
I’m grateful when Harper gives me a full hug before tugging on my hand, pulling me back to the right now. “Let’s go, Daddy. It’s time.”
“Not yet!” Pat calls. He puts a hand on the fence and vaults over, just the way he used to back in high school. “Not before one last family photo.”
Collin grins, following a grumbling James through the gate.
“Can Wolf take it?” Harper asks.
“He cut out,” I say. “Had to get back and open the bar.”
“You take it, Jamie,” Harper says, trying to hand the phone to James, who grunts and refuses, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“No.”
“Why him?” Pat asks.
“He’s the tallest,” Harper says.
“Dad’s the tallest,” James says just as Collin snatches the phone from Harper.
“I’ve got the longest arms,” Collin says. “Harpy, squeeze in a little closer.”
“I’ll show you long arms!” Pat reaches for the phone, but Collin keeps it out of reach, taking photos even as they’re jostling for control.
I pluck it from Collin’s hand. “I’m the tallest. And I have the longest arms.”
“Yeah, but do you know how to take a selfie?” Harper deadpans.
The boys howl with laughter, and I take a string of photos before anyone is ready as payback.
But even if no one was ready and only half of us are looking in the right direction, there are smiles all around—the picture of a family who lived through something hard and eventually came out on the other side.
Different. A little banged up. And maybe, now, finally, whole again.