Home, Bitter-Sweet Home

We sold our home today. A place I called home for 14 years and my wife for 5 years. While the sale of our home will bring us much more financial breathing space, I can’t help feeling a little sad.

Was this place filled with good memories? Not really. To be honest, I loathed the idea of moving to this place when we bought it in 1992 and over the years, I think I blamed it for many of my difficult situations. Was it fair? I guess you’ll have to be the judge.

It was a really tough time for me then. I had just left the army and was struggling with my tertiary education, nursing the wounds of a broken relationship and the fact that I had to give up my two Alsatians when we left our semi-detached home in the East. Why did we leave? Financial troubles, mostly. I guess my parents didn’t have much of a choice.

So, we moved from a huge house to a small apartment. It took me a long time to get used to the place. I couldn’t feel "at home" there so I slept mainly on the couch. As I started getting used to the place as well as the idea of living in a more confined area than I was used to, my mother passed away. This was where I came face to face with having to deal with a death. It shook me severely.

A couple of years after my mother’s passing, I bought a 7-year-old sports car, a car that I had been dying to own since it made its debut in the showrooms when I was still performing my service to our Nation. It was my pride and joy. I washed it almost everyday and waxed it every weekend. I spent so much time with it my father once suggested I should just sleep in it – hopefully in jest. Sadly, I had to let it go after only 7 months because I was blissfully unaware of the financial troubles my father was experiencing and by the time I came to know, the situation was quite dire. Till this day, I still feel the pain of losing that 2-door black beauty.

Life went on after. On top of fate tossing me a few more broken relationships, my dad had a heart attack and was admitted to hospital for a major heart bypass surgery. I juggled work and looking after him during his 6 months recovery period. My father and I had our ups and downs there but whenever there were downs, we looked out for each other and managed to overcome, albeit barely.

And not long after the millennium rolled by, my grandmother passed away. Her wake was held at a relative’s apartment, two floors above ours. I still vividly remember having to carry her casket 4 storeys down, past my apartment, to the hearse before it made its way to the crematorium. I bade my beloved grandmother a very tearful farewell.

A few years later when things were looking up for us, my father was slapped with a highly unjust lawsuit by an unscrupulous internet-based company. My father was shaken but in comparison to what it did to me, he was a rock. This was mainly because of something I had pushed him into and the result of an honest mistake made by a close friend.

And for those who have read my very first blog entry, you will know that my father became critically ill and passed away while we were living here. After his passing, I found a video tape I made of my father’s birthday in 2005. He was sitting in a wheelchair, struggling to cut his birthday cake with what little strength he had left as a result of a brutal stroke. Again, I blamed our house.

But as I received word that the sale was complete today, I started looking around and strangely enough, the bad memories started fading into the background and I started remembering different things about my 14 years in this house. Being a music enthusiast, I had my first home studio here, something I was not able to do while living in my old home – a much bigger place. Although I had to sacrifice a beautiful 7-year-old sports car, I now own a brand new black sports sedan tricked out with the coolest gadgets.

But the most important memories are the ones I feel in my heart, not see in my driveway. I remember when finances were tight, my father and I used to have a simple Saturday night dinner where he would fry some ham and eggs and we would have it with rice. It was a simple meal but I enjoyed it, not because I enjoy clogging my body with cholesterol but because my father would tell me stories about his youth or we would have spirited debates about politics and current affairs over our humble meal. We talked and laughed till the wee hours of Sunday morning and when my father got tired and turned in, I sat quietly in the darkened living room thinking of the fantastic conversation we had with a smile on my face.

This is also the place where I made a wonderful woman I got to know my wife. We had a simple ceremony there by turning our living room into a hall that could accommodate 30 of our closest family and friends. In the presence of a Justice of Peace, we took our vows to have and to hold and we were pronounced man and wife. I remember that day fondly.

This is the house where a tiny, odd-looking Jack Russell Terrier came to live not too long after I got married. Being the rascal that he is, he was named Eddie after the loveable JRT in the comedy Frasier. The odd-looking fellow eventually grew up to be a handsome chap with the un-JRT-like popped up ears. Then came Casey, the all-white cutie. Today, they make it painfully clear that my wife and I are sharing their home, insisting on a place at the dinner table, a corner on the sofa and a place on the bed.

But most importantly, a very recent development that I was blessed to be able to share with my father a month before he died. I know it made him very happy. I will reserve that for a future entry.

I realised a few things today. Firstly, it is hard to see the blessings in life when you are plagued with so many difficulties. But if you manage to look past these struggles and see the small gifts that you have been bestowed with along the way, you will know that it is the difficult times that makes the good times sweeter. This is very cliché but I truly feel it, especially today. Secondly, it is the bad things in life that paved the way to the light at the end of the tunnel. And last but not least, I also realised that it is a combination of the good and the bad things we experience as a family that makes a house a home.

So, as I pack up the CDs, sound systems, computers, crystal ware, books, appliances and other items that I will need to be moving to our new house, I am also packing the bad times I’ve faced into mental boxes in my head for storage while I fill a golden chest with the wonderful memories I’ve experienced in the last 14 years in my heart. I will work hard to keep this chest unlocked so that I'll have easy access to these memories to remind me that life’s not all bad. And as the lorries roll out of here in a few months to bring our stuff to the new house, I hope that my wife, our two Jack Russells and I will experience more of the blessings in life and find the strength and courage to overcome the tough times that may swing by as we embark on making the new place our home.