I moved a while back. Not a big move but one that triggered some thoughts and emotions.
I MOVED A few weeks ago, couple of months after Connie went into the memory care unit.
I didn’t move far at all. From the third floor of the Chestnut Square apartments to the first floor. It was yet another downsizing, from a two-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom.
Simple enough reasons. Connie is in the memory care unit so an old guy living alone doesn’t need all that much space. And, with the cost of memory care being what it is, cutting rent by a third helps.
Usually I find a move exciting, a new beginning. Not this one. When I first sat down after the movers left I was, well, sad. And alone.
This move marked the first time since August of 1968 that it wasn’t “our” move. It was “my” move and I didn’t much like it, even though the apartment is nice and take away the master bedroom, identical to the one I left behind.
But it’s not ours. It struck me that I never have lived alone. As a child, there was family, in college, there were roommates. Then there was Connie, then the kids and after a while, just Connie and me again.
I have four nice walls and a patio filled with flowers, but I don’t really have a home. It’s taken a while to dawn on me, but I guess for me at least home is people, not walls. What I have now is a comfortable place to shelter from the storm.
I tell myself “I still have a two-bedroom apartment, it’s just that Connie’s bedroom is seven blocks away.”
So goes the journey….
Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. Since 1995 he has operated an international consulting, public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development with major corporations, organizations, and government. Semi-retired, he and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].