My Last Night Home ...

Kiss today goodbye.
And point me towards tomorrow.
We did what we had to do ...

For nine years this house, my home, has served me well. I've laughed here. Cried here. Been my worst and my best here. But soon, like the rooms that already stand empty and waiting for someone else to arrive, I will be just another memory here, an echo sounding off of bare walls.

And these walls won't remember me. Soon they'll be decorated with someone else's things. And people I don't know will use my key to call this place home. And they will laugh here. And they will cry here. And they won't know how I spent my last night here. One part of me very happy to begin somewhere new, and the other half of me wanting to cling to what I know. The comfort that is home.

They won't know that I spent my last night sitting on the floor surrounded by candlelight. Or how I listened to my favorite Joni Mitchell song and didn't bother to wipe away my tears as they rolled down my cheeks. They won't know how red and swollen my eyes were, or the headache that resulted from all those tears. And they won't know that had I been able to find the aspirin packed away in some box, somewhere, my headache would have been gone long before I went to bed, to sleep one last time in this house that I've called home.

And they won't get sentimental over trees in the front yard. And they won't always begin their conversations with remember when ... And they'll start making their own memories from the very first time they walk in the front door. When they open the kitchen cabinets to put their dishes away. They'll barely spare us a thought. Perhaps one to remark about how clean the place was when I left, or perhaps comment on the morning glory vines that I'll leave growing wild on the back porch. Perhaps then, they will take a moment and remember that someone lived here before, and was honored to have called it home.