It felt like leaving a part of my life at that moment. So long it had been there to shelter me and keep me safe, but now I was leaving it. That strange feeling in my gut told me I was never gonna see it again. It felt like I was leaving a friend whom I had known my whole life. Saying goodbye was going to be hard, harder than anything I’ve ever known. I was born and brought up in it, it looked after me, cared for me, it was like a mother to me.
Those cold thunder showers, as I watched from it’s windows, the cold winters, I spend in front of it’s fireplace, was I ever going to see such things again? I am left to wonder. My house was had was pretty secluded, had pine trees all around it. Had a big enough compound to suffice me and my chidish needs. But now I will never see it again. At that point of time, the time of leaving the house, flashbacks and images of my past, my childhood ran awry in my mind. Where was I going to go from here? This is the only place that I’ve ever loved. It pained to look at it from the rear window of the car. I was losing a friend at that moment.
We did not choose to leave it, for we loved it too much, but were forced to. The house in which I grew up in, in which my mother and her mother grew up in, was now going to brought down making way for flats to be built. Houses that were built for the love of money, not the love of having a home.
This house, this land belonged to our family, it was our heritage, our heirloom. How could such things be taken away from us just like that? It was not fair, it was not right, but my teenage mind could not process the thoughts and process of a grown up. I did not know how all of this was possible. I just saw a letter in my mother’s hand, telling us the house would be sold, yes, we were to move to a new house, but was this right? How could somebody just come and take away something that could never be attached with a price tag? My young mind could not compute all that.
It all started that dreaded Monday, I never really like the first day of the week. The weekend was too short was what I always thought. The day would start with the usual stuff, get up, wash myself, go for breakfast and then off to school. But that Monday was different, that tingly feeling you get on the back of your neck, well that’s what I had. But I just shrugged it off and went about with my normal things-to-do. So after I had washd up, made my bed, I headed to the kitchen for my breakfast. But I did not see food on the table, what I saw worried me then and there. My mother’s head in her hands, her shoulders shivering as she sobbed silently, Papa was tryin’ to console her, continuously rubbing his hand down her back, tryin’ whatever way he knew to comfort her.
I ran to her, askin’ her what happened. But she was too grief stricken to reply. Papa looked up, with worried eyes, and told me what had happened. That they would have to sell the house and move out. “WHAT?!?!”. I said. This caught me off guard. How could they happen? How could we be asked to move out when we owned the house and the land it sat upon? The reason we were asked to move out was even worse. As I read the eviction letter, telling us to move out, so that our house could be taken down to pave way for flats to be built. I was a girl, I couldn’t take this, I felt nauseous thinking of moving out from the house, my room, how can I leave it all. Being the only child at home made it feel worse, my brother Jason had left for college a year back. “Move to a new place? But Where? I don’t know anybody else on the other side of town”. I said. But my rebellion was already a lost cause. Our house had been bought by a real estate company, with the permission of the municipal corporation. I may have be young but I wondered how a shoddy deal could be made without our knowledge. But it was all too late said Papa, the construction team would be coming in from tomorrow, and we were to start packing. Move out before the end of the week was the order printed out in bold in the letter. This can’t happen, maybe this was all just a dream, but horribly it was not.
The wonderfully weird feeling in my gut was just building up, knowing that we were going to leave this place we call home, our ancestral home, where most of my family had shared their childhood in. We all loved this house, Ioved this house. It was older than my Mother, older than Grandma and Great Grandmother. This house was horribly old. We cared for it just as it cared for us. We dusted it, we washed it, while it gave us warmth and shelter. And now we were going to have to leave it to die.
movers would be coming tomorrow morning, as Papa had called them earlier this morning.
So it was about time I started helping out. I grabbed my belongings and started dumping them into the cardboard boxes. Filled with anger, and sadness made me feel even worse. I just started to throw my belongings into the boxes. Not caring for them anymore, as I knew someday I would have to part ways with them. So I went about cleaning my room the whole day. After it was all done, I dozed off on the couch in the living room, so tired after all the packing.
I woke up after midnight. My parents had put a blanket over me for it was cold at night. I just wandered around the house, lit only by the moonlight. It cast a pale blue light on most of the furniture which had been covered in white cloth. It had a ghostly feel to it. I couldn’t believe it, in a few hours we would be leaving this place we called home, I called home. I just sat by the window, looking outside. It was my favourite spot to sit, and I was surely going to miss it.
Soon morning came, we had a quiet breakfast. Papa took the day off from work to help out. No one spoke much, just a good morning and eat up. Toasted bread and butter with an omelette was my favourite meal, I didn’t feel like eating it that morning. I slowly ate it, bit by bit and excused myself halfway through sayin’ I was done. I stood up and left the table. By that time, the construction company’s workers and the move away truck had come to take our furniture to the new house on the other side of town, which was more like a suburb, than where I lived.
Mother was already in the car by the time I got out, Papa was just checking that everything had been secured tightly. As I got into the car, a sharp pang shot through my heart. I had never known what love was all about, I now knew how I felt to lose what I loved. The sound of the car’s engine coming alive gave me a jump. It brought me back to reality. As the car started to move, all I did was sit still and not look back for it was too much to handle. As we headed down the driveway, the house grew smaller. That was when I had to turn back, have a lst glimpse before it was all gone. But as I turned to look back, Horror struck. A wrecking ball went straight through the house, leaving a gaping hole on the house’s wall. I cried aloud, but we were too far, too far to be heard. My mum just held me, she held me close as possible. As I cried, our car moved away, as far away as to not let us see what was being done to our house.
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