Farewell to Beechmount

This week my parents handed over the keys to the house I grew up in and moved out. While their new house is much nicer, this moment is still tinged with sadness because it feels as though my entire youth is encased in those walls and now it will be strangers living there and making changes.

 It only hit me this week that I had not gone and said a proper goodbye to my old homestead before it was gone and honestly it feels weird to say I will never go back there. Unless I become like the weirdly passive aggressive old residents who turn up on their doorstep demanding to come in for a look around. And yet I wouldn't wish it on my parents to continue living there because much as I love the place it is cold and damp and pretty miserable during the 6 months of Irish winter. I went to view their new place yesterday and it felt strange to see them not at 'home' but I know it will be a better fit. When I sat there with the sun streaming in the kitchen window I could not deny they had made the right move but perhaps it would have been nice could Beechmount have sat empty and then we could all revisit our childhood at will rather than abandon those memories to time.

 I know its strange to feel this possessive over a house but its the only place I remember living when I was young and I did spend most of my life there. I wonder will the new owners look after it well. Will they paint over the drawings we made in the shutters, my sister and I, when we were much younger and bolder. Will they be haunted by the memories of the Flemings growing up, surely these have seeped into the walls and live in the very fabric of the place. Or will it become a new house with memories and new life and ours will be forgotten. Only to re-emerge when the family gathers together and we will fall into a chorus of do you remember when.

 Had I the choice or money , I would not have bought my old house with its dark rooms and the dampness creeping into every corner but I will still miss it even as I move forward reminding myself I am actually a grown up and that it will be so much nicer for my parents in the new place that will be adequately heated and lower maintenance. But I still want to take a moment, that I will let pass, to be sad and say my own farewell to Beechmount 

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