My therapist suggested it.  A way of holding on while letting go.  

It was a strange exercise, but easy to do. Dispelling the myth that you can’t go home again.

My parents lived in the same house for 53 years. We moved there when I was just three years old. It was a place of safety, warmth, and comfort. It was the place where I deeply felt all the angst of my teen years. Where I hate you! was thrown at my father each time I felt misunderstood, and music would be turned up loud to express whatever was on my heart at that particular moment. It was the place where my future husband would kiss me after a long-awaited first date. It was a place of learning and growing, of misunderstandings and coming together.

That place was being sold. I had no control over who was buying it. I desperately wanted it to be someone with a family, to ensure its legacy of love continued. 

Instead, it was bought by a contractor who built an additional house on the property. What was once a comfortably sized home with a beautiful yard now contained two attached houses, a multi-car garage, and very little green space. It was impossible to drive by my parents’ old house and feel any nostalgia. Their home was gone, rendered unrecognizable.

I barely glance at it now when I drive by. The home I grew up in no longer exists in the physical world. It now only exists in my heart and mind. 

In the same year the house was sold, I lost 4 family members including my mother. I sought out therapy to process my grief.

The therapist suggested that I could go back and visit the house, in my mind, anytime I wanted. She suggested I picture each room and hold those memories anytime I needed to go home. 

It is not an exercise I do often, but it is a comfort when I do.

Because I grew up there and then visited there for most of my adult life, details of the house are etched into my memory. Over the years, countless changes and updates were made, and I remember all the before and afters.

Whenever my siblings and I would refer to our childhood home we simply called it, “171”, its street number became it’s lasting and endearing name.

When I pull the house back into existence, I can pick and choose which aspects I remember.  The more recent brick walkway is erased; instead, the walkway made of beautiful slate stepping stones reappears.  I climb the stairs and pause to touch the dark green front door coated with thick layers of paint. Thanks to my Dad, there was always a well-maintained American Flag proudly flying, except once a year when the Irish flag would appear. The red geraniums hanging from a basket on the overhang were my Mother’s touch. I ring the doorbell just to hear the old familiar chime. I didn’t need to ring the bell since we all had a key. We were welcome anytime, so I know I’m welcomed each time I imagine myself walking through the front door and into the home again. 

I remember what it looked like to a seven-year-old, a twenty-year-old, and a fifty-year-old. I remember the furniture, the light fixtures, the knick-knacks, wallpaper, flooring, and ceilings. The white flowers with orange centers on the pink wallpapered walls of my bedroom when I was nine. Following that the bigger bedroom with the cool purple walls that later were painted a warm yellow. I remember the view out the kitchen window of the beautiful backyard. The birch tree that became sickly and was cut down long ago is back. In my mind, it is strong and healthy—blowing in the breeze.

I can remember the voices of my parents talking to each other. Sometimes, I hear the TV as the nightly news fills the house followed by the Jeopardy theme song. Music might be playing on the record player in the dining room, filling the first floor with Irish music if it was my Dad’s pick, or country music if Mom had her way.

I can sit in the kitchen and talk with my mother. I can hurry out the front door and get into my father‘s gold 1970-something Pontiac as he drives me to high school.

I can relive any moment. I can remember trying to catch some sleep on the living room floor on the days leading up to my father’s death as we stayed with him until his last breath. I can picture every Christmas Eve spent there in that same living room. I can see my five-year-old self sitting on the shiny, diamond-patterned blue couch, with song sheets in hand as I sang along to ‘Christmas with Mitch Miller’, eagerly awaiting everyone’s arrival.

Outside I might be twirling around and playing as a three-year-old in the front yard, watching the cars go by. Other days I might be playing in the large, playground size sandbox my father built for me. I can see myself swinging on the swing, pumping my legs to try and swing high enough to reach the clothesline that ran from the house to the oak tree.

My memories of that place are vast.  I remember arguments and misunderstandings, frustrations, and sadness. I remember the hard times as well as the good.  The walls of that house held it all.  For over 50 years, that house contained two of the most significant people in my life, along with siblings, extended family, and friends. It was the kind of place where visitors were always welcomed.

The physical house is gone. Some of the people are gone. But the memories are all there, allowing me to visit whenever I choose. The key is an exercise of the imagination. It unlocks the door to a place where I am welcome anytime. I simply close my eyes, and I am home.