The End of a Chapter

Our goal for the last two months was to empty out the house on Hickory Street and put it on the market, and with an abundance of hard work we accomplished that goal this week.  On Sunday, we cleaned out the few remaining things, and on Monday we met with a real estate broker and formally began the process of selling the house.  It is the best time possible, in a booming real estate market with Labor Day weekend rapidly approaching, and we are optimistic about selling it soon.  

We had decided to list the property with Country Club Properties, where we had both worked for several years after retiring from our other careers.  The broker is Terry Potts, who grew up with Martha and who knows the property well.  He was close friends with Martha's Mom and Dad and actually lives next door.  "Great neighbors!" Martha had written on the list she had made of all of the "pluses" of this house.  We signed the listing agreement on Monday afternoon, and by the next morning Terry had placed a sign in front of the house.

 

Tuesday afternoon, Scott and I made one final trip to the landfill with the remaining trash, mostly empty cardboard boxes left over from the estate sale.  When we returned, there was a car in the driveway, and when I went to see who it was, I found that it was two real estate brokers who had seen the listing on the MLS - Multiple Listing Service - that morning and who were previewing it.  Martha had already taken them through the house and they had seemed impressed.

Today, we returned to Hickory Street to take care of a few odds and ends, like trimming some rhododendron in the driveway.  We had both been out running - intervals for me, the first in many weeks, and four miles for Martha - and Martha told me that Terry had arrived at his house next door when she was finishing up her run (she had parked in the driveway) and had told her that the house had already been shown four times.  It felt odd to return home this afternoon and not feel as if we had to return to Hickory Street.  Everything is in the hands of our Realtor now, and we are returning to our "Old Life," at least as much as we can still find that life in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.  I went out in the heat of a September afternoon and mowed the yard for the first time in over a week, and then cleaned all of the walkways with Clorox, badly needed this rainy summer.  Our yard has, sadly, become overgrown and neglected over the past two months, and there is much work to be done.

It is an odd feeling, walking through this big empty house, as I did this morning completing a few final chores on the checklist.  I wandered through the sunlit empty rooms, remembering where once we had sat in front of the fireplace on holidays, a Christmas tree in the next room, or at the dining room table for Christmas Dinner.  There are wonderful memories here, but absolutely everything has been removed from the house except for those memories.  The only exception is a lovely little picture of the house by Martha's Aunt Anne - Jane's sister - which we have left propped up on the mantel for future owners to enjoy.