It was hard saying goodbye to my home of six years. I’d come to almost think of the little house on the corner as my real home, as someplace I would stay for years to come. But as is the case with any time I let myself feel too comfortable in the past, it was not to be.
The entryway I’d helped build with my father in law, the plastic I had put over the windows to keep the cold out over the winter, the water heater I’d helped to install – these would soon only be a memory. Wasted efforts on a material possession that was never mine. Instead of patching the windows or the piping under the house, I should have been patching my marriage.
I loaded the last of my things into my slowly-deteriorating green Subaru hatchback, the sun casting a ridiculous happy glare over everything as the reality of the situation finally began to settle in, like a rock in the bottom of my stomach.
I looked around at the lawn as I held a box full of my possessions, never unpacked from when I first moved in. I had mowed the grass one final time not too long ago. That was something I didn’t think I’d really miss, but I did already. Who knew when I’d have a lawn to call my own again?
Our two dogs stood on their hind legs and watched me leave from the window looking out over the driveway. I had already said my goodbyes to them, but I didn’t think they understood. My dog Ludo had licked my tears from my cheeks as I sobbed, earlier. Wednesday stood next to him, and both of them had ears perked, neither thinking I would never return.
I revved my engine, pulled from the dirt driveway I’d shoveled out during six winters past and I reversed onto the road.
I drove away that day not angry, but sad. Not sad that things had changed, not sad that I’d failed, but sad that life could be so tragic as to allow two young people to meet, fall in love, and then become strangers.