Selling The Childhood Home

The History And The Grief That Follows

1962 - Our family home shortly after moving in.

I was recently reminded of the memories attached to my childhood home when I connected with a high school friend on Facebook.  We hadn’t seen each other in almost 40 years, but she said she thought of me recently when she drove past our home. It wasn’t until after the sale that I realized the grief was associated with the end of that chapter.

Whenever someone asked where I lived, I would say the big yellow house at Oak & Main. My school, Oak and Main Elementary School was directly across the street. During recess, my classmates and I would run to the fence and wave hi to my mother, who was perpetually weeding. I remember my classmates asking if we were rich. I thought it was such an odd question. We weren’t, but everything is relative. We did have a larger home than most. I had my own bedroom, which wasn't that common in a family of six. I had many friends that lived in three-bedroom, one-bath homes. 

We moved into that home in 1962 when I was four years old, and I lived there until 1980 when I was 21. We sold it in 2016 after the passing of my mother. My mother suffered from hoarding disorder. My memories of moving into that nearly empty home were a stark contrast to the fate it held when walking down the hallway was done sliding your body sideways against the wall because of the stuff, the stuff piled in boxes and piles consisting of God knows what. 

I left that home in 1980, but it still amazes me when I connect with someone from my NJ past that remembers it. My father built that home during his off hours with the help of one carpenter.  At such a young age, I didn’t realize how hard that must have been commuting 4 hours round trip a day to Trenton, NJ, where he worked at the DMV. It was that home when I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas jail. It was that home when I watched the troops returning from Vietnam, when I saw Richard Nixon resign as president, when I saw students shot at Kent State, when I saw school riots irrupt during integration, when I saw color TV for the first time when I saw the Beatles debut on Ed Sullivan when I learned to dance watching Soul Train, when we celebrated the births of my nieces and nephews and grieved the deaths of my father and grandparents.  It was that home when I screamed at my mother three weeks before she died for letting it deteriorate as it fell victim to her hoarding disorder.  She told me that day she wanted to die there, and it was that home when her caregiver found her dead. An investor bought the house, renovated it, and painted it grey.  A new family lives there now, making their memories and one day remembering when…