Going To a Better Place

Today my parents are packing up their house and preparing to move from the home in which they have raised 6 kids. They lived at this house, my childhood home, for 37 years. It wasn't their choice to move, but they have known it was coming for over 10 years. They happen to live near an airport that is expanding and have seen their parish and neighborhood go from a thriving community to one that's been stripped of it's houses to make way for a runway (despite 9/11...go figure). My parents are pretty adaptable people, so I think they've handled it well. But can you imagine living in a place for the last 10 years knowing it will be leveled? You can bet you don't invest as much time or energy into this house when you know it will only be destroyed. The airport has already bought many houses around them and the ones that are waiting to be bought don't look too good. This is a long, slow process. It takes years to buy out each home and level it. I don't know how many homes were in the buyout but I could guess a couple thousand. So you have to live with these surroundings until it's your turn. Kinda depressing!

In many ways they are looking forward to a new start. In the past couple of weeks they've dealt with their air conditioning going out twice (in stinkin' hot weather!), two toilets that can't be used because they back up into the shower downstairs, and electricity that was out for two days because of a bad storm. The back deck is rotting and caving in, the roof looks like it's peeling off shingle by shingle and many of the homes around them are already gone. No wonder they want to escape it.

Today, I visited the house for the last time. Each room I walked through reminded of the life the house once held. Six kids running around and playing with all the other kids in the neighborhood. It was the house I came home to when I was born and learned how to walk in. It holds the bedroom that I shared with my sister which cultivated a lifelong friendship. That bedroom holds our secrets shared late at night in whispers when mom would say from her room, "Go to sleep!"and it's the same room that I would run to when I wanted to escape the miseries of the preteens to cry in my pillow. My bed was where I spent many a late night reading a good book by flashlight. I remember the first time I shaved my legs with my sister and mom coaching me along in the hall bath. The backyard was our playground. I remember using the back deck as our look out to "fairy land" with the neighborhood friend. We would make sarongs out of towels and clothespins and pretend we were fairy princesses. The front porch is where Ted and I would kiss each other goodnight.

The house brings all these memories to light, but the memories don't belong to the house. They won't be forgotten when the house is torn down. I get to keep those. We also have pictures to remind us of what it used to be. Which brings to mind an ironic analogy. A friend of mine just lost her father to cancer on Friday. In the middle of all this moving, we are attending his visitation and funeral. It made me think about death and how it is like leaving an old house and going to a brand new one. His body may have been consumed by cancer and slowly died... but the soul does not stay there when death happens. It goes to a much better place! Our bodies are just a shell. I'm always amazed at how little a body resembles the person when they die. It's like they aren't there. And they aren't. Everything that gave that body life is gone.

The same things apply to my parent's house. It's really just a shell. Everything that gave it life is leaving. So really, there is not much to be sad about. Tomorrow, my parents will move all of their belongings into a to a brand new house. They don't have to be surrounded by stuff that's falling apart. Everything is brand new. What a deal! I'm so happy that they won't have to worry about the maintenance of an older home and they are going to a thriving, young community. It's full of life. Unlike the place they are leaving.

My friend's dad has left is old, imperfect body and now has a new body in Heaven. He doesn't have to worry about chemo anymore or doctors visits or the fears of dying. He has a brand new body in Heaven. A perfect one.