An alternate title for this blog: Letting Go Is Like Peeling an Onion: sometimes tears, sometimes surprises, always some sort of flavor.

I look at the photos above and it’s hard to type out words through the teary blur. Remembering that Thanksgiving moment, I recall my dad in a kind of Shecky Greene–swing with an “I’ll be here all week, folks, and don’t forget to tip the bartender” lean in. It was Thanksgiving 2021 and we were entering our second year in Cali, having made it through COVID in our pod of three, and each of us having gotten our vaccine(s). Yet we remained a team of just us, living at the intersection of caution catercorner enjoyment with my dad’s place as the locus of that love.

He lived in that shag-carpeted-retro-fireplace home for three decades. He created his collages (pssst. great Christmas gifts. Good cause. click link.), made his martinis, cared for a couple of cats, played golf, volunteered, and generally seemed to live a version of his best life while there. I’m a homebody myself (Cancerian trait and all, carrying my home/shell with me everywhere) so I could really feel the personality of his place when I’d walk in the door. The way it settled onto my shoulders like a warm shrug. It held him happily, which was infectious.

When we moved him out in May, a first layer peeled back. I’m not questioning that the move was necessary—and don’t get me started on a health care system that is so broken as to not allow affordable in-home care for the regular Joe&Josephine—but I do know that the last two months of my dad’s time on this earth was made more discombobulated by the shock of new surroundings. This particular peel of the proverbial onion brings a sting. No matter that he still had all his recognizable stuff: The Eames chair, his books, his art table, etc. It wasn’t the stuff, it was the literal walls that he now stared at which didn’t at all resemble the view or vibe he’d known. The surroundings that had held him creatively, snugly, happily were not available. The new walls were fine as walls go, but wholly unfamiliar and not comforting.

At his old place, every once in a while he would move the furniture around. Even (especially?) after passing the age of 90, a chair would change places, a side table swapped, art alternating on walls. Only the bookcases would remain stationary. Once we got here, he’d mention a thought he’d had about rearranging and I’d balk, envisioning him collapsed on the (shag) carpeting, then try and talk him out of it. Mostly at that point, only lamps got lifted and switched. Eventually, my no-more-ladders dictum stuck. He grumbled about that but maybe inside, silently, he understood why.

This week his place went on the market. Over the last couple of months, Dennis transformed it into a wholly new and beautiful experience. The way-cool fireplace remains, the shag not so much. I’m coming around to the core of the bulb, the emotional center. A place where I can recognize how another human(s) will make this place a home. Fill it with love, comfort, creativity, laughter, tears, secrets, maybe even martinis. But, to be honest, as we round the bend toward twinkly light season, my breath does catch and my eyes blur for sure remembering the love we all shared inside those walls that kept us safe and smiling.

Christmas 2022 (below)