A Childhood Home

Our Childhood Home
1975

I haven't been back to my childhood home in nearly twenty years....Distance, time and life got in the way. Dad always met up with us in Utah or Canada....There was never much pull to return to a house that held many difficult and painful memories, so I let distance time and life get in the way.... 

Our Childhood Home
Now

Dad's situation was much worse than we imagined...Kelli knew it the minute she saw Dad, Monday. Since then my Sister and Aunt have been making the arrangements to bring my Dad back to Utah for assessment and care. Through lengthy phone calls, emails and pictures Kelli has kept me in the loop. I have been surprised at the roller coaster of emotions we have faced. The sorrow of loss...who my Dad once was, his gift of laughter and music, gone...a childhood home that was less than ideal...

This week has not been fun but we have still found things to laugh at....Dad forgetting Kelli had his car and almost calling the police..."Well if mom can call the police on me, I guess it's only fair that Dad can almost do it to you" ....

When we continued to live in this house after my Dad left,( My parents seperated when we were 9, my Dad moved back into the house when we moved to Canada 5 years later) it was a absolute disaster....think Hoarders. I'm not exaggerating. A complete outward expression of mental illness and heartache. The sad part we thought everybody lived that way...

So the pictures Kelli posted only slightly surprised me....I think what is most surprising to both of us is the striking similarities between both Mom and Dad's mental and physical decline...Even though its been 30 years since they resided together...it is surreal.

   

Dad's house now resembles pages out of a children's "I Spy" book....Its an "I Spy" of my life...Not one piece of furniture has moved or changes since we left, 25 years ago...papers and pictures pop out at me, memories of gifts given, concerts performed or enjoyed and trips made....

The tympani drum (bottom right corner) my dad "borrowed" Santa Ana College decades ago...the brown couch my mom lived napped on...the kitchen table ....nothing has moved

Those shelves, pictures of family

The stairs we used to slide down in laundry baskets still covered with the yellow shag carpet from 1971, the rocking chair from when we were babies.

Emotions run the gamete....I have lived in nearly a dozen homes since my parents. Loud, happy, cluttered, funny, busy, peaceful, loving places. Far from perfect, music, laughter and a piano and  china cabinet the only mementos carried forward from the house I left to the home(s) I've created. 

I understand and love my parents, even in the difficulty, the lessons of in patience, compassion and hope have been a blessing to all of us.