You know, I remember it like it was this very morning – July 18th, almost ten years ago, came up like nobody’s business- all bright and full of promise – just has she had predicted. There was nothing to fear really, it was all so very well planned out by my bride-to-be. Every last detail…the appetizers, the perfectly matched bottles of wine on the table for our friends to enjoy, the music – certainly the music, the perfect dinner – oh it was grand. To this day, friends will tell me it was the best wedding they had ever attended (followed by the inevitable and obligatory, “sorry to hear about you and the Mrs”). Maybe that was the problem. Maybe, living up to the grandeur of the wedding – in happily ever after style – was too much to ask of anyone, really.
We had no money to speak of, we were struggling to pay rent at that apartment on Highland Street but, we were determined to pay for every last detail of this our special day and for what we could afford, it had to be grand – and it was. Because, when you are in love, everything else is gravy.
Almost to the day, a year later – we found our dream house nestled in a quiet neighborhood with good schools and mercifully easy access to highways and good food. My hands are almost sweaty now – thinking of how we were going to meet the mortgage payments. Somehow, we managed to make the payments on time, every time and buy groceries and furnish our love nest. The house was not exotic or overly large by any means – it was a simple ranch with attached garage (which sold me on the idea of purchase) and had so much potential.
A year after moving in, my wife decided it was time to renovate – and renovate we did. Every single space was reconfigured and painted via our carefully researched and hard earned purchases, not to mention the umpteen hours of homeowner sweat equity which transformed our once modest ranch house into a warm and inviting showplace.
Suddenly, one year turned into five and what was once breathless anticipation of your lover’s arrival had turned into the bitter acrimony of disdain. When did this happen? I can’t say for certain. No, there was no one seminal event that turned happy acres into our own private Amityville Horror.
Five years further still and we are now, somewhat civilly (thankfully), deciding who gets the end table and who gets the quaint lamp. I can tell you that the dividing up with almost surgical-like precision, of what you had once considered the last place you will ever live, to be a wholly sobering experience – far beyond who gets what and why. It’s not really about who gets the blender and who gets the comfy couch. More, it is about coming to the realization that everything you had worked for and hoped for and sweated to accomplish, for years, is now reduced to a petty yard-sale-like value. I can honestly say it sucks, big time.
In a mere few weeks, I’ll be leaving my “home” for the last time. The good news is, there will be a young couple, recently married and full of promise and their own ideas of what makes a home – taking over my old stomping grounds. I’d leave a light on for them, but I got custody of the very last lamp in the decree.
