February 12: Last Supper

Final dinner in the old family home. Unsurprisingly, my middle sister gets pissed. She digs out a photo of mum which she has found in the clear-out. It’s of her in her bad-perm and round owl-like glasses days, on holiday somewhere in eastern Europe, and taking a bite out of a very long sausage in a very provocative manner (the tart).
We’ve got hotdogs on the hob to make sandwiches with for tomorrow’s god-awful early flight. The said-pissed sister whips one out and makes mum reenact the pose and we all laugh very loudly.
Earlier, I had walked around the house, taking photos, wondering what life would be like without it, dredging up old memories from childhood. Mum’s greenhouse and vegetable garden, where she used to grow cherry tomatoes, now ruined through years of old-bone neglect; the overgrown laurel hedge which used to hide the double-decker treehouse before it was dismantled; the blue weather-frayed now-cut rope hanging from the willow tree which I used to climb; the granny flat where we spent so much of our time as children being loved, and fed and spoilt; our bedrooms; the window-sill I used to sit on to overlook the fields opposite our house. I weep, though I’m not sure it’s about the house. Somehow I feel as if I’ve got enough other stuff to weep about at the moment. Losing the house is sad but there’s sadder stuff going on. And it’s time for mum to move on with her new life and into a new home; time for us all to move on. It's not all bad, I reason. But perhaps I’ll feel differently when we don’t have it.