This year will mark a very big event in my life, as of this year I have lived in the same place for fifty years, that’s right a half century in one place.
As I write this blog I am sitting in my office which has been my office for Nineteen years, thirty one years prior to that it was my bedroom.
My bedroom carried a lot of memories, I remember my first bed, the time when I was sick one Christmas and all my Christmas presents were in my room, I also became a man and lost my virginity in that bedroom.
My walk in closet to anybody else is just a closet, but to me it was the place where my Mom woke me up and brought me to show me our cat and the first litter of kittens she had.
When I am at the kitchen sink looking down at it, I remember looking up at it wondering if I would ever see over it.
The driveway was where I learned to ride a bike and then years later I would pull into it with my first car, then my first new car.
The patio was a place where memories were made. I have a picture with My Mom, Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle and cousins, and in then twenty four years later in the same spot with Joanne and her family.
One weekend in August of nineteen ninety two My Aunt, Uncle and cousins came over again and it was a great day, my Mom was just retired and did not get to see my Aunt and Uncle much and she remarked to me how happy she was that day.
The next week my Mom was gone. I found her in the kitchen. The coroner said she died from an aneurism. She was only retired for thirty seven days but at least she died in the home she loved.
When my Mom died the house in disrepair I rebuilt the place, even quit comedy for five years to do it and In October of nineteen ninety six two days after I deemed the renovation completed I carried my bride Joanne through the front door.
This was the front door twenty eight years earlier where I was told my Dad was dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound.
It’s amazing how much happiness and sorrow has been through this house with Holiday parties with my in laws to the department of social services trying to take me away from my Mom.
I almost sold the place in ninety seven but Joanne convinced me to stay she wanted to raise a family here. But unfortunately that family never came.
Fifty years and I miss all the people that filled the place with memories and now most of them are all gone, My Mom, Dad, Grandmother, In-laws, the people that were the catalyst of making a house a home.
The final event in all of this is the ending of my marriage, after eighteen years we are calling it quits. We have had some great memories here which have been tarnished by the resolve that we cannot continue as a couple. It’s sad but it happens and is what it is.
After fifty years I am leaving.The house is going on the market in July. I have mixed feelings about it but I am not a young man anymore and my schedule with the show and comedy keeps me too busy to keep on top of it any more.
Now is the time for a new family to come and live their life and make their memories, for me the ones made in this place have been mixed.
And with these mixed feelings I don’t know how I will react the last time I walk out the door, will I be an emotional mess? Or will I just drive away?
Fifty years is a long time you know.