WHEN CHANGE THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE [M, 4-9-18]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I had so many good times in that house. Now a bunch of strangers who don’t know a thing about those good times will hang around in it, acting like they own the place. It makes me sad.

No, not my house. Bill’s and Ann’s house.

Bill died three years ago. It is a big house. It’s too much for Ann to keep up by herself. She’s doing the logical thing and moving to a duplex in a senior citizen living place.

On top of that, she sold it to the first family that looked at it. Is that an omen, or what? How much righter can you get?

I wrote her an effusive letter about how she was doing the right thing and all that stuff. Then I saw the videos the realtor had used in preparation for all the work she didn’t have to do to get it ready to show.

I was amazed. I felt so sad. I am never going to be in there again, the site of so many happy memories.

When your friends make transitions, you have to make transitions, too. I didn’t understand that until now, when Ann sold that house.

The transitions old friends make are not totally different from those when we were younger. We all had to change from one house to another once in a while along the way. But there are more memories to sort through in the transitions of our friends when we are old than when we were young. Bill and I were friends for almost sixty-five years. Helen and I visited in that house Ann is selling for exactly fifty years.

And we know that a move like this is the last move before the one to the Shady Rest Home or the Shady Oaks graveyard.

Why do people think old people want shade so much? We want the sun. In the same place it’s always been, through the window in Bill and Ann’s Four Seasons room.

That, however, is not going to be. It’s okay to be sad as the transitions come, because that is real. It’s better, though, to give thanks for the good times we had BC-Before Change.

JRMcF

Johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

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