Letting Go...

This house was my "second home" is what my papa called it for me, for almost 28 years, my whole life, I partook in this house, loved it like I lived there, many days I did as a child, I swam many days and nights in their swimming pool in the hot Kansas summers....my papa even taught me how to swim as a youngster. "SUMMER TIMES A COMIN, SUMMER TIMES A GOIN GOOD OL SUMMER TIMES!" I would hear papa sing loudly sitting in his patio chair watching me swim and play with my barbies in the water....I sit here now as a 28 year old woman, and I can still hear his voice sing that phrase over and over again, and it echoing in the dephs of my mind. On cold blustery school days, after school and papa picking me up and taking me to his house, he would take me by a gas station on fridays that was close to my old grade school and buy me some candy and a slushie, "Every Friday is treat day", what my papa would say...and we would go down to his basement, all cozy and warm, with the faint smell of grease and gun powder and we'd work on my math homework until every problem was solved and until I understood it completely. I loved watching TV with my Nonie and luckily we liked the same shows and movies, at their pea green bar counter, is where my nonie gave me paper and markers and I would entertain myself for hours and draw until my hand hurt. Year after year, my child years grew into teen years, I still spent so many days over there, nothing ever changed. I would drive there constantly by myself and just spend time with them. Thats what I lived for, teens can be busy sure, but any spare moment I would get, I would go over and see them....I remember the beanie baby phase nonie went through, we both had a love for them, I would sit on her couch, which now is in my living room here in Nebraska, and just look at all 300 of her beanie babies, and talk about them for hours. As a teen, they even let me bring a few of my bestest friends over to swim....my friends always had a blast! I remember the very momentous occasion to where I finally brought a young man over to swim (my hubby) well at the time he was my boyfriend, my 2 younger cousins both brought boyfriends long before me, and it was a big deal for when it was finally my turn to do so! lol of course the jokster my papa is, told us both to behave ourselves out there and that he trusts us to be alone, with one of those ear to ear grins...I still laugh to myself everytime I think of that. When in college, everytime I came home, I made a point to go there at least twice every home visit. My papa would go on "Wendy's runs" everytime i visited and he would bring back a sack full of cheeseburgers and fries. To this day he will still do that. Last June, my mom came up to Lincoln to visit for a weekend and she told me the news that they were moving....I was in total shock. I didnt know how to react. So late June I came home and there were boxes everywhere! They were starting to downsize, and my grandma told me to look in those trash bags and pick out what you want, I opened one of them, and they were full of all her beanie babies! I said, "Nonie, your beanie babies?! you dont want your beanie babies!?" she told me that she doesnt need them anymore, so she wants all of her granddaughters to take their equal share of them, so I took about 100 of them back up to Lincoln, Nebraska with me. When I got back to my house, I cried for days, my hubby found me one day laying one the floor clutching all of the beanie babies sobbing like a little girl. They smelled like their house, and I just couldnt understand why my nonie would give up something she loved while still living? My last time seeing that house august 30th. I took maybe 200 pictures of every angle of that house possible, took in every room, saying goodbye to the pool, to the house, I carved my initials, "LK" in a huge rock out behind the house, even took some rocks from their rock garden to keep for the rest of my life, in a way having a part of that property. They put the house on the market about 5 weeks ago, and it sold 2 days ago....that house now has another family in it, it's gone out of my life now. It is so hard for me to let it go, I feel like I am grieving losing it, a part of me has died, and a part of my soul is still left in that house. I keep having dreams about it, almost every night for the past 2 months, and last night I just felt empty. It will take me a great deal longer to let it go, my memories are flooding my mind everyday, and my husband helps me day by day to grieve and i cry into my cat's furr and they let me. This is going to be a rough process in the next several months to come, maybe even years.