Our House

My mum and dad's house went on the market today and I went the wind of change blow through my bones because it was the house I grew up in. 'Just bricks and mortar' I kept telling myself when I was cleaning it and preparing for this day. But it never is really, because we are pressed into the air like a watermark, our laughter, good times and traumas, our years, our lives.

    It's nothing special really as a build, a link detached 1970s house, but mum and dad bought it as a new build and it had... CENTRAL HEATING. The tiny little house we came from was freezing, single pane glass windows, no garden. This one was warm and sunny with a long south-facing garden. It backed onto playing fields and in the long hot summer of 1976 all the kids on the estate were climbing over their back fences to go on it to play tennis, we couldn't get out fast enough. Our house also looked over the nearby allotments and mum would stand at the window for ages just listening to the quiet and the odd cockerel call. It was her sanctuary, her palace and she kept it sparkling and spotless.

    It had a couple of renovations over the years. Out went the old avocado bath suite with matching tiles and in came a nice white one. Out went the 1970s brown, orange and yellow carpets and in came the warm red ones. Out went the MFI basic kitchen and in came a nice woody one. Out went the broom cupboard and in came a downstairs loo for mum that the builders finished on the day before we had the first lock down - they moved everything aside to make it workable for her. My parents weren't fancy gardeners but they kept the back lovely, weed free, they planted flowers in the borders, dad kept it religiously mowed. It was a proper sun trap and they were always out in the back, sitting enjoying it. And when my kids came along, they each had a little toy mower so they could follow dad up and down making stripes and a little table and chairs to eat their fish fingers al fresco.

    Mum and dad had parties with friends there, we had family crowded around the Christmas table, aunties from Glasgow staying, mum's cousin who drove an HGV would just arrive without warning and everyone was always welcomed, fed and watered. I didn't recognise my dad without his headphones on, he'd either sit in his armchair listening to the little stereo or at the back of the room with the big stacker system lost in a world of James Last and Herb Alpert. Jesus - the amount of cassettes and CDs he left behind was Guinness Book of Records quantity stuff. His treasures, but no one else's and it was sad to have to dump what had given him so much pleasure (I've had to tell my kids, when I go, don't get sentimental over my treasures - my paper and stationery and craft punches... just offload because they're served their purpose). It was a happy, comfortable house and they were beyond content with it, and it always felt like home to me, even long after I'd left.

    It took me a while to go back into the house after mum had gone, there were just too many memories, too many reminders of those last few uncomfortable weeks. The house didn't feel the same and I think it was gearing itself up for another change. When she had passed, it felt more than empty, it felt devoid, because the last of its family had gone, it was beyond odd. Not as odd as the sensors picking up two independent orbs dancing around for an hour a couple of days after she'd died, strong enough to set off the motion detectors - and then again on the morning of her funeral. Even my cynical other half said, 'They've gone home.' 

    I think I stared into her wardrobe for ages not knowing what to pick for her to wear. She had so many clothes, loads of them not even detagged. I had to try and pack them up with my objective head on and think of them being loved by another little old lady, but I failed dismally. Clearing out the cupboards was hell because little things would set me off, a felt toadstool pin cushion I made when I was a kid mad on sewing, daft souvenirs from holidays in Benidorm, everything seemed to have a story attached, a rucksackful of memories and it was brain overload. My partner sent me away and emptied it instead. It all went, the wardrobe I'd had as a kid where I'd hang up my school uniform and my latest Chelsea Girl purchases, the old 1980s cabinet with my mum's ceramic treasures and photos in frames, her telegram from the Queen having pride of place; the three piece suite that was in as perfect nick as it was when they bought it thirty years ago. The big dodgy lightshade that my grandad always said looked like a spaceship. It was a house that served them as a young family, the house they welcomed their grandchildren into. It was the house they had their sixtieth wedding anniversary celebrations in and not long after, the house where my father's hearse left from. And finally, my mum's. The only way she wanted to leave it and there is a very small consolation that we managed to keep her in it safe, with her own things around her, to the end.

    We had it painted to freshen it up, lifted up the carpets so I would feel as if I was selling A house not THEIR house. And hopefully a family will buy it and move in and make it their own, build their own happy layers into the atmosphere. I'd hoped my son would take it over, that was always the plan, but he realised it wasn't the house he wanted, but the house with my mum and dad in it and so it's better he finds somewhere fresh, somewhere neutral; he should look forward not back.

    I've written enough about clearing out clutter to know that things bind to you like emotional knotweed, but, when it finally happens, letting go of this house will be like pulling out a part of my spine. And then I think it will take me a very long time to venture past it and see it as someone else's. But I hope they are as happy as we have been in it and for as long because some houses are just more than their components... and this is one of them.