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Wherever You Move, Memories Will Follow By Donald M. Murray, Globe Correspondent, 3/16/2004 Minnie Mae wakes and has me shut the bedroom door against the new owners who are not yet here. I assure her we are alone in the house we built 40 years ago. She wonders which rooms the new owners are sleeping in. Slowly I bring her back to the world's reality, but as she takes a short morning nap before she dresses, which has become a custom, I walk the empty halls and pass through rooms stacked with boxes and feel hollow. I do not feel the emotions I expect. It is no longer my house and not yet the new owners', whom we know and like. I study the strange shadows, click on the light switch. The shadows jump back, but the room is no longer Anne's. I click the switch again. The shadows return, but they do not stagger under the weight of memories. They are just shadows. The day before the movers come, I review our quick but now inevitable decision. From the day we moved into this house we knew we would adapt it to one-floor living if anything happened. The anything was Minnie Mae's Parkinson's. As the disease progressed, we did what many of our friends said was irresponsible. We visited communities with great dining rooms and many "activities." We visited "assisted living facilities" but felt they were not right for us. The nursing home we saw was better than we expected but not good enough for us to plan to spend the rest of our lives with the near dying. We solved the problem by avoiding it. But Minnie Mae's falls became more frequent, the three floors of stairs more difficult. We returned to our original plan: we would redesign our home for one-floor living. We talked to architects and builders, but it became obvious that their solutions would not only be expensive, they would leave us with an inconvenient hodgepodge of rooms. This house was not designed for a change to one-floor living. We returned to a policy of avoidance, not arguing with our daughters, friends, and doctors, just nodding in agreement with their wisdom, then ignoring it when they left. We knew better than they did how badly things were going, but we were overwhelmed by hourly challenges. We were bred with stubbornness and we held onto it, an ineffective life raft in increasingly turbulent seas. Then I visited a friend in a condo across town and casually mentioned it to a daughter. In days we had bought a beautiful condo in Fitts Farm. It was the right decision. We dismantled one life and prepared for another. Now as I walk our empty rooms or pass the boxes packed for the movers, I realize the rooms are empty of memories. They have already moved to the condo and crouch there, waiting for our arrival. We are not leaving our lives behind for the new owners. Their memories are waiting here, silent and unseen, while our own tears and laughter are settling into the condo. We have not lost our lives but sent them on a new adventure. I am impatient for it to begin. SOURCE: The Boston Globe, MA http://tinyurl.com/36met * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn