The Things We Leave Behind

We sold our house last week. There was nothing particularly earth-shattering about it. Houses are bought and sold every day, and we hadn't lived in the house for several years. When we moved to the suburbs a few years ago, we chose to rent our house instead of dealing with the tumultuous post-bubble real estate market and so, for the past six years, various groups of twenty-somethings have called our house home. Although we had great tenants over the years, for the most part, I was thrilled to call it quits with my role as landlord. And yet part of me -- a loud and unshakable part of me -- was unsettled and sad. Part of me was tempted to make the two-hour round-trip drive into the city to say goodbye -- not to the house, but to the patch of dirt in front of it. Nearly seven years ago, we planted a tall hibiscus in the middle of that small mound of soil. Desperate for a little color around the house, we splurged on hundreds of dollars' worth of gardening tools and plants. We filled huge planters with yellow, orange and red flowers that we couldn't name and set them on both sides of our front door. We planted tomatoes along the side of the house. And we surrounded a tall hibiscus with countless multi-hued impatiens. If a flower was colorful, it went into our cart and eventually into the ground. Just sprucing things up a bit, we said. But we both knew what we were doing. We were mourning. A week earlier, we had stared at the quiet ultrasound machine, silent but for the stat...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news